Hire employees in Greece using an Employer of Record

Greece pays its employees more than 12 times a year. On top of the monthly salary, you're on the hook for a Christmas bonus equal to a full month's pay and an Easter bonus equal to half a month's pay, plus a separate leave allowance when someone takes vacation. Miss one of these and you're not just annoying an employee, you're breaching a statutory obligation that shows up in an inspection or a severance claim later.

That's before you've registered anything, run a single payroll cycle, or figured out what "e-EFKA" even stands for. Most companies find out how much is involved only after they've made an offer and the new hire is waiting on a start date.

Your three options for hiring in Greece

You've got three real paths to get someone working legally in Greece: set up your own entity, hire them as a contractor, or use an employer of record (EOR). Each has a different cost, timeline, and risk profile, and the right answer depends almost entirely on how many people you're hiring and for how long.

Option 1: Set up your own entity

• Cost: significant upfront legal, registration, and accounting setup, plus ongoing compliance overhead every year
• Timeline: typically 3-6 months minimum before you can legally pay anyone
• Complexity: e-EFKA registration, ERGANI II digital hiring filings, payroll infrastructure, and ongoing HR administration
• Makes sense when: you're committing to 20+ employees and a permanent presence in Greece

Option 2: Hire contractors

• Cost: nothing upfront, but you give up a lot of control over how the work gets done
• Timeline: immediate, no registration needed
• Risks: Greek law presumes an employment relationship if someone works mainly for you for nine consecutive months, and the burden shifts to you to prove otherwise. Get this wrong and a "contractor" can be reclassified as an employee, with back pay and contributions owed.
• Makes sense when: the engagement is genuinely short and project-based, or the skill set is specialized and standalone
• Note: Hire with Columbus also handles compliant contractor agreements and payments if that's the route you need

Option 3: Use an employer of record (recommended for most)

• Cost: from $179/month per employee
• Timeline: 2-3 days to get someone hired and on payroll
• Complexity: none on your end. We register the employment, run payroll, handle the mandatory Christmas and Easter bonuses, manage e-EFKA contributions, and keep you current on filings
• Makes sense when: you're hiring 1-50 people, testing the Greek market, or building a team across several countries at once

Why an EOR usually wins the math

If you're hiring 1-10 people, entity setup costs more upfront than several years of EOR fees combined. From $179/month, one employee costs $2,148 a year with Hire with Columbus. Hire three people and you're at $537/month, no entity, no local payroll team, no ERGANI filings to learn. Compare that to the months of setup time and ongoing accounting fees an entity requires, and the EOR route usually pays for itself before you've even made your first Greek hire.

An EOR also removes the guesswork around Greece's specific obligations: employer social contributions that average about 21.8% of gross pay, mandatory holiday bonuses, 20 days of annual leave, and notice periods and severance rules that scale with tenure. We handle the contracts, the payroll, the contributions, and the compliance updates so you don't have to become a Greek employment law expert to hire one person.

Ready to hire in Greece without setting up an entity or gambling on contractor status? Get started with Hire with Columbus.

What employment types can you use?

You've got three ways to bring someone onboard in Greece, and each one comes with its own cost and risk profile. Let's break down how they compare, then we'll get into which contract type fits once you've picked your path.

Part 1: How can you hire in Greece?

1. Set up your own entity

Incorporating in Greece means registering with tax authorities, opening a corporate bank account, building a payroll system that connects to e-EFKA (the social security agency), and putting HR infrastructure in place before you can legally pay anyone. We can't quote you an exact fee or timeline here, but plan for months, not weeks, once you factor in legal drafting, registration, and payroll approval.

• Ongoing: annual accounting, statutory filings, corporate tax at 22% on profits, and continuous compliance with Greek labour law
• When it makes sense: 20+ employees, long-term commitment to the Greek market, or a real local operating presence
• Complexity: full tax registration, ERGANI II payroll reporting, e-EFKA contribution filings, and ongoing legal upkeep

2. Hire contractors or freelancers

This is the fastest way to get someone working, sometimes the same week. But Greek law gets specific about when a "contractor" is actually an employee wearing a different label.

If someone works exclusively or mainly for your company for nine consecutive months, Greek law assumes an employment relationship exists. You have to prove otherwise, and if you can't, you're looking at back social contributions, back taxes, and a dispute over unpaid leave and severance.

• Limitations: you can't direct their hours, methods, or exclusivity the way you would an employee without strengthening the misclassification case against you
• When it makes sense: short projects under six months, or specialized one-off work where genuine independence is real
• Hire with Columbus also drafts compliant contractor agreements and runs payments, so you're not guessing at the line between contractor and employee

3. Use an employer of record (recommended for most companies)

Hire with Columbus becomes the legal employer in Greece. You keep control of day-to-day work, performance, and priorities. We handle the contract, payroll, tax withholding, social contributions, and statutory benefits.

Under Greek law, this setup runs through the temporary employment framework, where the placing entity and the client company share responsibility for wages and social security contributions. The law requires a written contract up front, spells out placement terms, and guarantees the worker pay and conditions no worse than if they'd been hired directly.

• Cost: from $179/month per employee
• Timeline: hire in 2-3 days instead of months
• We handle: employment contracts, payroll, e-EFKA registration, statutory benefits, leave tracking, and termination compliance
• When it makes sense: 1-50 employees, market testing, multi-country teams, or simply skipping entity setup and its ongoing overhead
• Example: 5 employees runs from $895/month, no incorporation, no annual filings, no payroll build-out

Part 2: Employment contract types in Greece

Picking your hiring path (entity, contractor, or EOR) is just step one. You still need to choose the right contract type, and Greek labour law recognizes a handful of standard forms, each with its own rules on duration, renewal, and conversion.

Permanent (indefinite) contracts

This is the default choice, and the right call for core, ongoing roles. There's no end date, and Greek law treats this as the baseline relationship, separate from fixed-term arrangements.

Employers can agree to a probation period of up to six months on an indefinite contract. During probation, the employee still gets all statutory protections. It's not a lower-rights period, just a shorter notice window if things don't work out.

Fixed-term contracts

Fixed-term contracts need a real reason behind them, like a defined project or temporary need. If there's no objective reason and successive fixed-term contracts with the same employer add up to more than three years, the law assumes you're using them to cover permanent staffing needs and converts the relationship into an indefinite contract automatically.

You also can't string together successive fixed-term contracts with only a short gap between them without them counting as one continuous term. If you're hiring for a genuinely temporary need, keep records showing why it's temporary.

Part-time work

Part-time employees accrue leave, holiday pay, and other statutory entitlements in proportion to hours worked. Parents of children up to 12 can request flexible arrangements, including part-time or remote work, after six months of continuous service with the same employer, and employers must respond within a set window.

Temporary agency employment

Greece regulates arrangements where a worker is employed by one company (the direct employer) but placed to work under the supervision of another (the indirect employer). This is the legal basis for how an EOR model like ours operates. The rules require:

• A written contract before the placement begins, setting out pay, insurance terms, and duration
• Pay and conditions for the placed worker at least equal to what the indirect employer would provide someone hired directly for the same role
• A cap on placement duration: continuous placement with the same indirect employer can't run past 36 months (including renewals) without triggering conversion into an indefinite contract with that employer
• Joint liability between the direct and indirect employer for wages and social security contributions

For most companies hiring in Greece through Hire with Columbus, we default to a permanent contract for ongoing roles and only use fixed-term when there's a genuine, documented reason. That keeps you inside the conversion rules and avoids a surprise reclassification down the line.

How does payroll and taxation work?

Budget a EUR 2,000 monthly salary in Greece and you're committing to a lot more than EUR 24,000 a year. Once you fold in the mandatory Christmas and Easter bonuses, the leave allowance, and employer social contributions of about 21.8% of gross pay, the real annual cost lands closer to EUR 34,000. Here's how the pieces fit together.

Minimum wage and average wage

The statutory minimum salary is EUR 920 per payment for salaried (white-collar) employees, effective from April 2026, and EUR 41.09 per day for blue-collar workers paid by the day. Because a thirteenth salary is mandatory in Greece, that EUR 920 is one payment, not a twelfth of the annual total. Employees receive extra statutory payments on top of the 12 monthly ones (see below), so the annual minimum is higher than EUR 920 x 12.

For context, the average monthly wage across the economy sits around EUR 1,934.

Income tax brackets

Greek income tax is progressive, with rates rising as income climbs. For the 2026 tax year, the base scale (no dependent children) looks like this:

Dependent children reduce the rate on the middle brackets, and there's a flat EUR 777 tax reduction for taxpayers without dependent children. Employees under 25 pay 0% on the first two brackets, and those aged 26 to 30 pay a reduced 9% on the second bracket. None of this is something you calculate manually, it runs through payroll.

Social security contributions

Both employer and employee pay into Greece's social insurance system, e-EFKA. On average across the workforce:

Contributions apply up to a monthly insurable earnings ceiling of EUR 7,762. Above that, no further social contributions are due on the excess, though income tax still applies.

Payment schedule: the "14 salaries" reality

Greek payroll isn't 12 equal payments. Employees are legally entitled to:

• 12 monthly salary payments
• A Christmas bonus equal to one full monthly salary (paid in full if employed the whole calendar year)
• An Easter bonus equal to half a monthly salary
• A holiday (leave) allowance, generally capped at half a monthly salary

Add it up and a full-year employee effectively costs close to 14 monthly payments, not 12. Miss this in your budgeting and you'll be short by roughly a sixth of annual payroll.

Illustrative employer cost example

Say you hire someone at a EUR 2,000 gross monthly base salary. Here's roughly what a full year costs, treating this as an illustration only:

That's noticeably more than the naive "salary x 12" math most companies start with.

Payroll cycle

Salary is paid at the end of the period it covers, which for salaried staff is normally monthly, though a contract can specify weekly or fortnightly payment instead. Payments must go through a bank account or recognized electronic payment method, not cash.

Common payroll mistakes

• Budgeting on 12 monthly payments and forgetting the Christmas bonus, Easter bonus, and leave allowance add roughly two more months of pay.
• Applying employer contributions above the monthly insurable earnings ceiling when they shouldn't be.
• Treating the average income tax rate as flat instead of running it through the progressive scale, especially for employees with dependent children or under 30.
• Missing that blue-collar and white-collar minimum pay is structured differently (daily wage vs monthly salary).

Managing it yourself vs. letting someone else handle it

Running Greek payroll in-house usually means a local accounting firm or payroll platform, someone tracking e-EFKA filings and the insurable earnings ceiling, and ongoing exposure if a bonus calculation or contribution rate changes and nobody catches it.

With Hire with Columbus, from $179/month per employee (USD), we run the calculations, file the contributions, time the Christmas and Easter bonuses correctly, and keep you compliant without you needing to track e-EFKA circulars yourself.

What benefits and leave are required?

You'll pay Greek employees 14 times a year, not 12. That surprises a lot of first-time employers, and it's the single biggest thing to get right when you budget compensation in Greece.

Annual vacation

Employees get 20 working days of paid annual leave for a standard 5-day work week. Leave builds up over the year and the employer must grant it gradually, finishing the full allowance by the end of the first quarter of the year following the one in which it was earned.

At least one block of the leave has to be taken as a continuous stretch (a minimum of 5 or 6 consecutive working days, depending on the work pattern), not scattered as single days. If you haven't granted the full entitlement by 31 March of the following year, you owe the employee the outstanding leave pay anyway, and it doubles (a 100% penalty on top) if the delay was down to employer fault or negligence.

Leave pay and the separate leave allowance (a bonus tied to the leave, capped at half a month's salary for salaried staff) are both paid in advance, at the start of the vacation. If someone leaves the company before using their full entitlement, whatever's outstanding gets paid out at termination.

Sick leave

If an employee can't work due to illness through no fault of their own, you keep paying their salary: up to one month's pay if they've been with you a year or more, half a month's pay if they haven't. You can deduct any statutory insurance benefit they receive for the same period from what you owe them.

Beyond the employer-paid window, e-EFKA (the national social insurance fund) steps in with sickness benefits, subject to its own certification and eligibility rules. A doctor's certification is generally required to establish the "serious grounds" that protect the employee's pay claim.

Parental leave

Maternity leave runs 17 weeks in total: 8 weeks must be taken before the due date and 9 after birth, and the timing is compulsory, not optional. On top of that, mothers can access a separate special maternity protection benefit of up to 9 months, paid through DYPA, which is where the commonly cited combined maternity-related leave period of around 56 weeks comes from.

Paternity leave is 14 working days, paid, and the employer must grant it around the birth regardless of the father's tenure or family status. It can be taken as a single block or split, partly before and partly after delivery.

Parental leave (for ongoing childcare) gives each parent 4 months, usable in one go or in parts, until the child turns 8. DYPA pays a benefit equal to the minimum wage for the first 2 months of that leave; the rest is unpaid unless your policy says otherwise.

After maternity or parental leave ends, parents also get paid reduced-hours childcare time (an extra hour off daily) for up to 30 months.

Other family leave worth knowing about:

• Up to 5 unpaid days a year for carer leave (looking after a family member with a serious medical need)
• 6, 8, or 14 unpaid days a year for a child's or dependent's illness, depending on how many children the parent has
• 2 paid days for the death of a spouse, child, parent, or sibling
• Up to 4 days a year to attend a child's school activities

Public holidays in 2026

Greece has 9 compulsory public holidays that apply to all businesses:

Employees who work on a Sunday or public holiday are entitled to extra pay or time off in lieu under Greek working-time rules.

Mandatory benefits and contributions

Social insurance in Greece runs through e-EFKA, and both sides pay into it:

• Employer contributions average about 21.8% of gross pay
• Employee contributions average about 13.4% of gross pay, deducted from salary
• Contributions are calculated up to a monthly earnings ceiling of €7,761.94; pay above that isn't subject to further social insurance contribution

On top of monthly salary, two statutory bonuses and a leave allowance are mandatory:

• Christmas bonus: one full month's salary
• Easter bonus: half a month's salary
• Leave allowance: tied to annual leave, capped at half a month's salary

Together with 12 regular monthly payments, this is why Greek payroll effectively runs on a 14-payment cycle rather than 12. Miss a bonus, or prorate it incorrectly for someone who joined mid-year, and you're short-paying wages, not just missing a nice-to-have.

If you have remote employees, there's a specific mandatory reimbursement: at least €13/month for home workspace, €10/month for communications, and €5/month for equipment upkeep, unless you're already covering those costs directly (for example, a company phone plan or company-supplied laptop).

Employers are also on the hook for workplace health and safety, including a written risk assessment for the business and access to a safety technician and occupational doctor. This applies even to small teams, not just large employers.

Optional and competitive benefits

None of these are required, but they're common ways companies compete for talent in Greece:

• Private supplementary health insurance (public healthcare is available, but private cover reduces wait times)
• Meal vouchers or lunch allowances
• Extra vacation days above the 20-day minimum
• Remote-work stipends above the mandatory minimums
• Wellness or gym allowances
• Enhanced parental leave pay beyond the DYPA-funded portion

Common benefit mistakes

• Missing the 31 March leave deadline. If unused leave from the prior year isn't granted by then, you owe the pay, doubled if the delay is your fault.
• Underpaying the bonuses. Christmas and Easter bonuses must be prorated correctly for employees who didn't work the full reference period, not skipped or rounded down.
• Forgetting the leave allowance. It's a separate obligation from vacation pay itself, and employers often overlook it.
• Ignoring remote-work reimbursement. If someone works from home even part-time, the minimum reimbursement still applies.
• Treating paternity or parental leave as discretionary. Both are statutory rights the employer must grant on request, within set timeframes.

Getting the 14-payment cycle, the bonus proration, and the leave carryover rules right takes real payroll expertise, and a wrong calculation on any of them is a wage claim waiting to happen. Hire with Columbus runs Greek payroll and benefits administration from $179/month per employee, so the Christmas bonus, the leave allowance, the remote-work stipend, and the March 31 leave deadline are all handled correctly and on schedule, without you needing to track Greek labor law changes yourself.

What are the compliance requirements?

You don't need a wet signature on paper for employment contracts, but every new hire has to be digitally registered before day one. The paperwork trail after that matters more than most employers expect. Here's what the law actually requires, what happens when you skip a step, and where an EOR takes the risk off your plate.

Employment contract requirements

Before an employee's first day, employers must file a Digital Declaration of Commencement of Employment in the ERGANI II system, listing the essential terms of the job. The declaration only takes legal effect once the employee confirms it, either with a handwritten signature, a qualified electronic signature, digital confirmation through the gov.gr portal, or acceptance via the "MyErgani" employee platform.

Separately, you have to hand the employee written notice of the essential working conditions within 7 working days of starting, and any supplementary essential terms within 1 month. Skip either deadline and you're relying on a shaky, undocumented version of what was agreed if a dispute lands in front of a labour inspector.

Watch fixed-term contracts closely. Successive fixed-term agreements need an objective business reason, and if their combined length passes 3 years, or renewals stack up without one, the law presumes they've converted into an indefinite contract. A gap of less than 45 days between contracts with the same employer (including group companies) also counts as continuous service.

Also worth knowing: if someone works mainly or exclusively for your company for 9 straight months under a freelance or services agreement, the law presumes an employment relationship. The burden shifts to you to prove it's genuinely independent work. Hire with Columbus drafts contracts, whether employee or compliant contractor agreements, that hold up against this presumption from day one.

Probation periods

Employers can agree a probation period of up to 6 months on an indefinite contract. Protective employment rules still apply throughout probation, so it's not a free pass to dismiss without process. If you keep the same person on for the same role afterward, you can't set a fresh probation period a second time, and any suspension of work during probation (illness, for example) extends the clock too.

Working time regulations

Standard working time is 40 hours a week: 8 hours a day on a 5-day schedule, or 6 hours 40 minutes a day on a 6-day schedule. Employees are entitled to at least 11 hours of rest between shifts and a continuous 24-hour weekly rest period, generally including Sunday. Anyone working more than 4 hours straight gets a break of 15 to 30 minutes, which doesn't count as working time.

Overtime carries a 40% premium on the hourly rate, capped at 4 hours a day and 150 hours a year. It has to be logged in ERGANI II, either declared in advance or, for businesses on the digital work-card system, reported by the end of the following month. Push past the annual cap and you need specific authorization from the Ministry of Labour.

Notice periods

Statutory notice for indefinite contracts scales with tenure:

If an employee resigns, their own notice obligation is generally half of the employer's, capped at 3 months. Across all tenures, Greek notice obligations average around 11.5 weeks, but the table above is what actually applies to any given employee.

Termination process

Dismissal has to be in writing; there's no valid verbal dismissal in Greece. Severance must be paid through a bank account or electronic payment provider, cash payment isn't an option under the mandatory payment rules. You also need to report the termination (or resignation) in ERGANI II within 4 working days of the employee's exit.

Some employees carry extra protection from dismissal: pregnant employees and new mothers up to 18 months after birth, working fathers for 6 months after birth, and anyone using statutory parental or family leave. Dismissing without a serious, documented reason during these windows exposes the termination to challenge.

Letting go of a meaningful share of the workforce at once can trigger collective redundancy rules under Law 1387/1983, requiring consultation with employee representatives and notification to the labour authorities, with thresholds tied to company size.

Employees have 3 months to challenge the validity of a dismissal and 6 months to sue over a severance shortfall. Miss those windows and the claim is generally barred, but that cuts both ways: get the process wrong and you're exposed for the full 6 months.

Severance pay

Across all tenures, statutory severance in Greece averages around 8 weeks of pay, but the real number depends entirely on how long someone's been employed:

Severance is calculated on the employee's regular pay for their last full-time month, then increased by one-sixth to account for the proportional Christmas and Easter bonuses baked into it. Employees under 12 months of service get no statutory severance at all, though the dismissal still has to be issued in writing.

Data protection

Greece applies GDPR directly as an EU member state, with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority as the enforcement body. Payroll records, health data tied to sick leave, and disciplinary files all need a documented lawful basis, clear retention limits, and data minimization.

Special category data, like health information or union membership, needs extra safeguards. If you're sending payroll or HR data to a headquarters outside the EU, you need an approved transfer mechanism in place. One rule that trips up remote-first companies specifically: webcam monitoring of remote workers to check on productivity is explicitly banned under Greece's remote-work regulations.

Common compliance mistakes

• Skipping or delaying the ERGANI II digital declaration before an employee's first day
• Treating a long-term freelancer as a contractor past the 9-month exclusivity threshold without documenting genuine independence
• Stacking fixed-term contracts without an objective reason, or leaving gaps under 45 days between renewals
• Missing the deadline to grant annual leave by the end of Q1 the following year
• Skipping consultation requirements before a layoff round that qualifies as a collective redundancy
• Paying severance in cash instead of through a bank account or payment provider
• Using webcam monitoring on remote staff, which is against the law regardless of intent

Penalties for violations

• Unwritten or undeclared terms: you carry the burden of proof in any dispute, with no paper trail to fall back on
• Wrong or late notice and severance: the shortfall is owed as a debt on top of what's already due, and employees have up to 6 months to sue for it
• Improper dismissal: employees can contest validity within 3 months; if a court voids the dismissal, back pay and reinstatement become live risks
• Contractor misclassification: reclassification means retroactive employer social contributions plus back pay of leave, bonuses, and notice entitlements
• Cash severance payments: breaches the mandatory electronic payment rule and invites penalties under Law 4611/2019

Hire with Columbus files the ERGANI II declarations, tracks the 45-day gap rule on fixed-term renewals, and runs the right severance multiplier for every year of service, so you're not the one calculating whether someone's 11th year owes 7 months or 8. For from $179/month per employee, every contract, notice period, and termination follows Greek labour law exactly, with no guesswork on your end.

What has changed recently?

Greek employment law shifted on several fronts in the past year, and if you last checked the rules in 2024 or early 2025, some of what you knew is stale. Here's what actually changed and what it means for anyone hiring in Greece right now.

Minimum wage went up in April

The statutory minimum salary rose to €920 per month for salaried employees, effective April 1, 2026. Blue-collar workers now get a daily wage of €41.09. If you set pay bands using last year's floor, it's time to revisit them, especially for junior roles where you're paying close to minimum.

The insurance earnings ceiling reset

From January 1, 2026, the maximum monthly insurable earnings for calculating social security contributions is €7,761.94. This ceiling gets reindexed annually based on consumer price inflation, so expect another adjustment come January 2027. If you employ senior staff on higher salaries, this cap is what limits your contribution exposure, not the headline percentage.

Overtime and premium pay got a tax break

Since November 1, 2025, night-work premiums, Sunday and holiday pay, and overtime premiums are exempt from both employee and employer social insurance contributions. That's a real cost saving if you run shift work or have staff regularly working unsociable hours. It doesn't apply to the base pay, just the premium portion on top.

ERGANI II replaced the old reporting system

Greece fully migrated to the new ERGANI II platform on February 16, 2026, replacing ERGANI I for hiring notifications, contract terms, and overtime declarations. Employers now file the "Digital Notification of Commencement of Employment" before the employee's first day, and it needs the employee's signature or digital confirmation. Missing this step before day one is a compliance gap that inspectors check for.

Law 5239/2025 reshaped probation and flexible scheduling

This law (published October 2025) introduced a formal probationary period framework for indefinite contracts, capped at six months, and opened the door to a four-day, 40-hour work week arrangement (10-hour days) if employer and employee agree to it. It also tightened rules around splitting annual leave into parts.

Immigration rules tightened for non-EU hires

Law 5275/2026 (published February 2026) revised the E.4 work permit process for third-country nationals. Sponsoring employers now need to show a legal employment contract of at least six months and proof they can actually cover the promised salary. Staffing agencies acting as the direct employer face their own documentation requirements under the same law.

What this means for you

None of these changes are reasons to delay hiring, but they do mean payroll setup and onboarding paperwork need a fresh look if you're using processes from even a year ago. This is exactly the kind of shifting ground an EOR is built to absorb. With Hire with Columbus from $179/month per employee, you're not the one tracking ERGANI II filing deadlines or recalculating insurance ceilings every January.