The mar­ket in which com­pan­ies oper­ate has long ceased to be lim­ited to nation­al bor­ders. The increas­ing glob­al­iz­a­tion makes it pos­sible for com­pan­ies to offer their ser­vices all over the world. These means that employ­ees are also increas­ingly mobile and mov­ing from coun­try to coun­try, to work on a job at the cli­ent loc­a­tion in anoth­er coun­try, or to work on a pro­ject at a for­eign branch of their employ­er.

Addi­tion­al rules for such cross-bor­der assign­ments have been in place with­in the European Uni­on since 1996, giv­ing employ­ees the right to cer­tain min­im­um employ­ment con­di­tions in the host state.  Over the years, the reg­u­la­tions regard­ing second­ments have been amended and sup­ple­men­ted.  The inter­pret­a­tion and imple­ment­a­tion of these reg­u­la­tions have been left to the Mem­ber States.

To mon­it­or and enforce com­pli­ance, in the most of the European Uni­on, there are oblig­a­tions for employ­ers to, for example, noti­fy the loc­al author­it­ies of cross-bor­der assign­ments; to keep cer­tain doc­u­ments avail­able at the work­place in the host Mem­ber State; and to des­ig­nate a con­tact per­son in the host Mem­ber State.  The (fin­an­cial) con­sequences of not meet­ing these oblig­a­tions can be very ser­i­ous for employ­ers.

We can help employ­ers nav­ig­ate their mobile work­force through the European reg­u­lat­ory land­scape. More inform­a­tion about our ser­vices can be found on this page. We also reg­u­larly post updates on European and loc­al changes in the reg­u­la­tions regard­ing the post­ing of work­ers.