The Posted Workers Directive: what a posting does to your contract

The legal frame is Directive 96/71/EC of 16 December 1996, concerning the posting of workers in the framework of the provision of services: your employer sends you to work temporarily in another EU country, you stay employed at home, and a floor of host-country terms travels with the work. Per the Commission's Your Europe guidance, a posting can last as long as it is necessary to complete a specific task, and when it finishes you should return to your workplace in the sending country — posting is a trip with a contract, not a migration route.

Source: Directive 96/71/EC — EUR-Lex, read 8 September 2026.

The Commission's posted-workers page states the operating rule: you get the same basic working conditions and rights as workers in your host country, and you will fall under the terms and conditions of employment of your host country if they are more advantageous than those of your home country. The directive itself frames this as a floor, not a ceiling — its recitals insist that host-country rules must not prevent the application of terms and conditions of employment which are more favourable to workers.

Source: Your Europe — Posted workers (European Commission), read 8 September 2026.

Per the same Commission guidance, a long posting changes the deal: if you are posted for more than 12 months — or 18 months, where your employer submits a motivated notification to the host country's authorities — all relevant terms and conditions of employment of your host country apply, with two exceptions: rules on the termination of contracts and supplementary occupational pensions stay with the home relationship.

Note what posting law doesn't decide: where you pay social security. That is the A1 certificate's territory, with its own 24-month logic under Regulation 883/2004 — the two clocks are related but not the same, and mixing them up is the classic posting error.

Source: Your Europe — Posted workers, long-term postings, read 8 September 2026.