Employer of record in Greece: costs, rules and how to hire

Greek hiring paperwork is digital and front-loaded. Use the ERGANI II Digital Employment Start Declaration before work begins, with the worker's required signature or digital acceptance, and use the same digital process for changes. The underlying written-information duties distinguish core terms within seven days from supplementary terms within one month, and an agency employment contract must already be written before the assignment starts.

Put the employment and assignment terms in writing

For a temporary agency arrangement, verify the provider's authority to operate and its required financial guarantees. The written employment contract must exist before the worker starts with the client, the agency and client need their own written agreement, and the worker's contract must identify the agency's authorisation and guarantee details and the assignment terms.

State the employer and worker identities, the job, location, start date, duration, salary components, pay period, hours, overtime rules and any probation, together with leave, training, termination, insurance and applicable collective terms. Use language the employee understands, and a bilingual version helps international teams. Keep agreed changes and the digital declarations consistent with each other, because they are compared.

Indefinite, fixed-term and part-time employment

Three contract types are in ordinary use, and each fails in a different way if it is chosen for the wrong reason.

A genuine fixed term ends on its agreed date or on completion of the specified work. Without an objective reason, successive contracts lasting more than three years, or more than three renewals within three years, create a presumption of indefinite employment that the employer must rebut, and gaps of up to forty-five calendar days count for succession. Three years is not an unconditional maximum for every objectively justified contract.

An agreed probation period for indefinite employment can last up to six months. For a fixed term it must be proportionate and no longer than one quarter of the contract, capped at six months, and renewal for the same job cannot create a new probation. Protective employment rules still apply throughout, and probation is a different thing from the ordinary one-year service threshold for statutory dismissal compensation.

Employee status and working from home

Classification depends on actual personal and legal dependence, including the employer's control over when, where and how work is performed. The nine-month rule is the one to know: personal work performed exclusively or mainly for the same employer for nine continuous months creates a rebuttable presumption of employment. A contractor label, a remote location or an invoicing arrangement does not decide the issue.

Agree remote-work terms covering equipment, support, costs, availability, data protection and health and safety, and communicate the additional terms within eight days. Remote employees have a right to disconnect outside working hours and during lawful leave, and webcam monitoring to assess performance is prohibited. Employment classification still turns on the actual relationship.

Remote expenses are set amounts rather than a negotiation. The published monthly minimums are €13 for use of home workspace, €10 for communications and €5 for equipment maintenance. The communications amount is not due when the employer pays the provider directly, and maintenance is not due when the employer supplies the devices. For fewer than twenty-two remote days in a month, calculate one twenty-second per remote day. These sit outside salary.

Do not treat an invoice or a home office as proof of independent status, and for a planned change in hours, pay or location, agree the lawful change and update the required records before implementing it.

Protect the work your team creates

Greek intellectual property does not transfer wholesale, and that matters more in an EOR chain than in direct employment.

For ordinary employee-created works the author initially holds copyright, and absent a different agreement only the economic rights necessary for the employment contract's purpose transfer to the employer. Employee software created under the contract or on employer instructions has a separate default transfer rule. Document in writing the onward rights the client needs, because the EOR's employer status does not automatically pass every right to the client, and moral rights are separate again.

Inventions follow their own split. A service invention arising from an employment duty to invent belongs to the employer, with additional reasonable remuneration when it is particularly beneficial. A dependent invention using business resources generally belongs 40% to the employer and 60% to the employee, with notification and exploitation rules, while other free inventions belong to the employee. Agreements restricting those statutory employee rights are void, so do not promise blanket ownership of everything the person creates.

Include confidentiality, system access, equipment return and the written rights your business needs, and have any post-employment non-compete assessed for its actual scope, duration, territory and compensation rather than assuming a global clause carries over.

Misclassification risk, and the honest limit of this section

Greece is one of the countries where the contractor question comes up most in practice, usually as a service-contract arrangement for a person who is working as an employee. The principle is the familiar one: the relationship is assessed on how it actually operates, and dependent work does not stop being dependent work because the parties papered it as a service.

I have not read the Greek test from a government source in our registry in this pass, so I am not going to set out criteria or a penalty figure as though I had. The registry's Greek material covers pay, leave, social security and immigration, and the classification test is not among it.

What a hirer does about it: decide the status on the working conditions you are actually going to impose, keep the day-to-day direction of the work with whoever the contract says employs the person, and where you need a member of your team rather than a supplier, employ them and register the employment properly. In Greece the registration trail is what a review looks at first, so an arrangement that is not registered at all is the weakest position to be in.

Two items on this list can change the legal position rather than the budget: the agency authorisation and the thirty-six-month assignment limit. The rest are recurring misreadings of how Greek pay and leave are structured.

Resolve these points before the offer

Ask the provider to answer each of these against this role, this person and this assignment.

• Agency rules: verify the provider's authority, permitted assignment and thirty-six-month limit where the agency regime applies.
• Annual pay: Christmas, Easter and annual-leave allowances are separate statutory obligations.
• Current minimum: €920 is the ordinary full-time monthly floor from April 2026; higher collective and seniority terms can apply.
• Hiring records: ERGANI II replaced the older system in February 2026; use the current digital process.
• Working time: extra work and overtime have different thresholds, premiums and reporting requirements.
• Family leave: seventeen-week maternity leave, nine-month special protection and four-month parental leave are different rights.
• Exits: probation is not a year without employment protections.

Then ask for an example payslip and an annual employer-cost breakdown before approving the quote, and confirm who records hours, approves leave, answers employee requests and receives government notices. In Greece the last of those matters more than it sounds, because the filings are frequent and dated.

Greek payroll has one combined insurance package rate and two shares inside it, and the most common budgeting error is adding the combined figure to the employer share. Keep the columns apart from the start.

2026 income-tax bands

Employee income tax is marginal and personal, so the table below is a starting point rather than a withholding rate.

That scale is for a person over thirty without dependent children in 2026. Age, dependent children, credits, deductions and tax residence all change the calculation, so ask payroll to work out the individual's withholding and net pay after applying the correct rules. Corporate income tax is a business tax and never an additional employee deduction.

Check special payroll components

One exemption is worth knowing because it changes the cost of a shift-heavy role. For full-time employees, qualifying night, extra-work, overtime, Sunday and public-holiday premium amounts are exempt from employer and employee social contributions under the current rules, and from 1 November 2025 that also covers enhanced percentages under collective or employer arrangements, using the statutory calculation bases. The underlying hourly pay remains fully contributory, and the exemption does not extend to all overtime earnings or to every part-time employee.

Agree who files payroll and insurance declarations, pays the authorities and reconciles corrections, and ask for a calendar covering the actual employer's obligations under the current filing system. Cross-border work, another country's insurance coverage and permanent-establishment questions each need their own assessment, and an EOR invoice settles none of them.

Work permits and recruitment from abroad

EU, EEA and Swiss workers have free-movement routes with residence formalities for longer stays. For a third-country worker, check the actual status and permitted employment before the start date. Greece's ordinary E.4 recruitment route involves the employer's application, an eligible vacancy, a national entry visa and the worker's residence application, and signing an EOR contract confers no right to work.

Under the February 2026 reform the ordinary E.4 recruitment application includes an employment contract of at least six months and pay at least equal to the applicable statutory minimum, alongside employer financial evidence and other required documents. The permit lasts three years and can be renewed for five years where conditions continue to be met. Other routes and existing statuses follow different rules, so confirm the route before committing to a start date.

The same reform opened a route that matters here: qualifying temporary employment agencies can act as direct employers for recruitment applications. The application identifies the user company and requires the agency-client contract and evidence of the user company's ability to fund pay, on top of the ordinary documents. That does not mean every provider or every placement can sponsor a worker, so verify the actual agency and the assignment eligibility.

Check the permission the candidate actually holds and whether it covers this employer, job and work pattern. Blue Card, intra-company transfer and other routes carry their own conditions, and visitor or digital-nomad permission does not permit local employment. Get the provider's confirmed route and documentation requirements before committing to relocation or a start date.

From 1 April 2026 the national full-time minimum is €920 gross per month for salaried employees and €41.09 per day for daily-paid workers. Apply proportionate part-time rules and any higher binding collective or seniority entitlement, and remember that the Christmas, Easter and annual-leave allowances are separate payroll obligations rather than something folded into that figure.

Set salary using the right floor and benchmark

Seniority increments are a live part of the Greek floor and they have a gap in them. Recognised service before 14 February 2012 and from 1 January 2024 counts for statutory seniority increments, while the intervening frozen period does not accrue service. Salaried workers receive 10% per completed three-year period up to three periods, and daily-paid workers receive 5% per three-year period up to six. Check recognised service and whether actual pay already satisfies the resulting minimum.

For a benchmark rather than a floor, the Labour Ministry's 4 February 2026 release reports ERGANI mean pay of €1,516 for full-time employment and €1,362.66 across full-time and part-time employment. Those are different workforce measures, and the release date is not a new salary entitlement. Use them as context, then price the actual role, experience and location, and never substitute an annual OECD dollar series for a Greek monthly salary.

One more distinction worth keeping clear: an annualised minimum-wage statistic can spread the additional salary payments across twelve months, so it answers a different question from the ordinary monthly statutory floor. Keep the two apart in the offer, in payroll and in any international comparison.

Pay dates and mandatory bonuses

Pay is due at the end of the agreed calculation period unless another lawful arrangement applies, and monthly salary is handled according to its agreed monthly pay period. Private-sector earnings must be paid into the employee's payment account with the payment reason and pay period identified. Set the actual payroll date in the contract rather than assuming a universal last-working-day rule.

Private-sector employees are entitled to Christmas and Easter bonuses. For the full qualifying period, Christmas is one monthly salary or twenty-five daily wages and Easter is half a monthly salary or fifteen daily wages, with Christmas measured over May to December and Easter over January to April, and shorter eligible service prorated. The Easter bonus is not a second full monthly salary, which is the error that inflates a first-year budget.

Annual leave is paid at the normal earnings the employee would have received while working, and the separate annual-leave allowance is capped at half a monthly salary or thirteen daily wages, both paid in advance at the start of leave. Bonus calculations also account for the applicable leave-allowance proportion, so fourteen salary equivalents is a budgeting shorthand rather than any employee's exact annual calculation.

Document discretionary commission or performance bonuses separately, with their eligibility, calculation and payment timing, and check whether the applicable collective agreement adds pay or allowances for the role.

Working hours, overtime and rest

The ordinary full-time contractual week is forty hours: eight hours a day over five days, or six hours and forty minutes over six days. Statutory overtime thresholds and lawful working-time arrangements are separate from that ordinary schedule, and a longer permitted day does not turn every employment contract into a thirteen-hour working day.

After more than four continuous working hours, provide a fifteen-to-thirty-minute break, normally outside working time. Daily rest is at least eleven continuous hours and weekly rest is normally twenty-four continuous hours plus daily rest. Average weekly work including overtime is limited to forty-eight hours over a reference period of at most four months, subject to applicable exceptions, and five-day schedules also carry their two weekly days off.

The premium structure has four tiers above the ordinary week, and the difference between them is the legal basis rather than the hour.

In a five-day system, qualifying extra work from forty-one to forty-five weekly hours attracts a 20% supplement, and in a six-day system that band extends to forty-eight hours. Overtime beyond the daily or weekly legal threshold attracts 40% for lawful hours, normally up to four a day and 150 a year, further authorised overtime attracts 60%, and unlawful overtime attracts 120%. Each percentage is a supplement to the relevant hourly wage rather than a replacement rate.

Night work from 10pm to 6am attracts a 25% supplement on statutory earnings, and Sunday and compulsory-holiday work attracts 75% on the statutory base. A Sunday worked for more than five hours normally creates a twenty-four-hour compensatory rest entitlement in the following week. Working a public holiday alone does not create that Sunday rest entitlement, and there is no universal double-pay rule.

Reporting differs by category, which catches out payroll teams running a single process. Qualifying extra work does not require advance ERGANI II notification, while overtime generally must be registered before it starts, though employers using the Digital Work Card can choose the lawful retrospective reporting system with entries by the end of the following calendar month. Record actual time and verify which system the employer has chosen.

Lawful arrangements can exchange additional hours during a busier period for reduced hours or leave elsewhere, with a reference period from one week to twelve months and the required agreement. The increased schedule is capped at ten hours a day in a five-day system or eight hours forty minutes in a six-day system, and a four-day, ten-hour schedule requires a lawful agreement and still totals forty weekly hours.

The statutory daily limit, the average weekly limit, the agreed schedule and the rest rules all apply together. Saturday work is not automatically Sunday work, and a public holiday does not automatically mean double pay plus another day off. Record the actual arrangement and the correct premium base.

Greek leave is layered rather than long: several separate rights can apply to the same family, funded by different bodies, and the mistake is to read them as alternatives. Maternity leave, special maternity protection and parental leave are three different entitlements that can run in sequence for the same employee.

Leave at a glance

The table sets out the entitlement on the left and who pays on the right.

Annual leave and public holidays

Annual leave accrues from the start of employment, proportionate to a twenty-day five-day-week or twenty-four-day six-day-week annual basis in the first calendar year. Service increases the entitlement, normally reaching twenty-two or twenty-six days after two completed years. After ten years with the same employer or twelve years' total service it is twenty-five or thirty days, and after twenty-five years' service it is twenty-six or thirty-one.

Grant requested annual leave within two months and complete the year's entitlement by 31 March of the following year. Under the revised splitting rules the employee requests a split in writing and the employer agrees, with one block of at least five working days in a five-day week, six in a six-day week, or twelve for a minor. Report leave taken to ERGANI II during the following calendar month.

The nine nationwide compulsory holidays are 1 January, 6 January, 25 March, Easter Monday, 1 May, 15 August, 28 October, 25 December and 26 December. Other days can be holidays under local, sector, collective or workplace rules, so check the relevant calendar. Clean Monday, Good Friday and Whit Monday are not part of that universal nine-day list, which surprises people who have worked in Greece informally.

A first-year employee accrues leave from the start. Agree the schedule and count days using the actual five-day or six-day work pattern. A workplace can offer additional holidays or more generous leave, and those additions should be stated as additions rather than presented as the national minimum.

Sickness and family leave

After at least ten days of work, an employee prevented from working through illness can retain wages for up to fifteen days before completing one year of service, or one month after that, measured by the employment year. For the first three days the employer pays half pay, and social-insurance sickness benefit can be offset against the employer obligation for the remaining period. Public benefit eligibility and duration are separate questions from that wage-maintenance obligation.

Maternity leave is seventeen weeks: eight before birth and nine after. If birth is early, unused prenatal leave moves after birth so the total remains seventeen weeks. Eligible adoptive and surrogate mothers receive the postnatal portion, and the 2025 reform extended it to qualifying foster mothers of children up to eight, without a second entitlement when the same foster mother later adopts that child. Employer obligations, e-EFKA payments and DYPA supplements are assessed separately.

Eligible employed mothers can then receive nine months of special maternity protection after the relevant preceding leave. DYPA pays a benefit linked to the statutory minimum wage, with a half-minimum rule for specified limited part-time patterns and proportionate holiday allowances, and an eligible employed mother may transfer up to seven months to the father. This is separate from the seventeen-week maternity leave and from each parent's four-month parental leave.

An employed father is entitled to fourteen paid working days around the birth, with no minimum-service or marital-status requirement. He can take two before the expected birth and twelve within thirty days after it, or take the whole allowance after birth. Adoption or fostering of a child up to eight also qualifies, and multiple births do not multiply the allowance.

Each parent has an individual, non-transferable four-month parental-leave entitlement until the child turns eight, normally after one year with the employer, with DYPA funding the first two months at the statutory minimum wage plus proportionate holiday allowances. Normally give one month's notice, and the employer must grant leave within two months of the request. Specified sole-parent and multiple-birth cases carry additional entitlements.

Parents can share the paid childcare-hours entitlement, normally one hour less work each day for thirty months following the relevant maternity, special maternity or parental leave. It is shared between the parents rather than a full entitlement for each. Equivalent full days or a continuous block require agreement, and part-time workers receive a proportionate entitlement.

Check eligibility, benefit applications and dates before promising full salary for a long absence, and state any employer-funded top-up separately. Adoption, fostering, multiple births, sole-parent status and part-time work can each change the entitlement or the benefit calculation.

Other personal and family needs

Greek law itemises personal absence in some detail, and the paid and unpaid rights sit next to each other.

After six months' qualifying service a carer can take up to five unpaid working days annually for a serious medical need of a qualifying relative or household member. Separately, a parent or carer can take paid emergency family absence up to twice a year, one working day each time, for illness or accident requiring immediate attendance, with medical evidence.

Ordinary dependent-child or family illness leave is unpaid: up to six working days a year, eight when responsible for two children, or fourteen for more than two. Specified serious child illnesses qualify for ten paid working days annually, and child hospitalisation can provide up to thirty unpaid working days annually under separate conditions, after relevant paid rights other than annual leave are exhausted.

Marriage or a civil partnership brings five paid working days on a five-day schedule or six on a six-day schedule, and bereavement leave is two paid days for the specified close relatives, including relatives by marriage in the same degree. School-attendance leave can total four paid working days per child each year, shared between parents, under the qualifying education and age conditions.

A parent of a child up to twelve, or a carer, can request flexible working, including remote work, adjusted hours or part-time work, normally after six months' service with the employer. The employer must consider and respond within one calendar month and justify a refusal or postponement. It is a right to request and to receive consideration, not a right to any preferred schedule.

Discuss other qualifying personal or study absences and the applicable collective agreement when a request arises. Record enhanced medical cover, meal benefits, training and other optional benefits in the offer with their actual eligibility and limits, and keep remote-work expense obligations separate from optional perks.