The latter might be a tax thing. For example, in The Netherlands we have the "vrije vergoeding van extraterritoriale kosten". Long story short, if a Dutch comp

The latter might be a tax thing. For example, in The Netherlands we have the "vrije vergoeding van extraterritoriale kosten". Long story short, if a Dutch company recruits an expert worker from outside The Netherlands, they are allowed to pay 30% of the salary tax-free for 5 years. Considering the salary tax at that level is nearly 50%, it's a significant difference. I would not be surprised if other countries have similar methods to recruit foreign high-quality workers. As for the former: it might be the case that the position is funded by an institution requiring a certain percentage of people employed by the project to speak the language. Stuff like that is not at all uncommon for subsidies. Alternatively, it might simply be the working language for the company. If you're going to develop a platform which will be used solely by people in Galicia, with an interface in Galician, it is not too weird to expect the people creating them to understand the language as well. But yeah, Europe is a diverse continent. You can't really work with a one-size-fits-all model.