Changing employer on an EU single permit: the 2026 rules

Directive (EU) 2024/1233 gives single permit holders an explicit right to change employer. Where the member state requires notification, the change may be suspended for a maximum of 45 days while authorities verify the conditions. The form of that notification and its deadlines are set by the national law of the country of work.

Under the earlier framework, a single permit was usually tied to one named employer, and leaving the job could mean losing the permit. That imbalance is what kept workers in place through underpayment or worse. The recast directive addresses the point directly.

What 2024/1233 grants

Directive (EU) 2024/1233 had to be transposed into national law by 21 May 2026. It carries three concrete protections.

First, the right to change employer. Where a member state requires notification, authorities may suspend the change for a maximum of 45 days while they verify that the conditions are met. That figure is a ceiling, not a standard waiting period.

Second, protection when work ends. If the holder becomes unemployed within the first two years, the permit cannot be withdrawn for at least the first three months. After two years of stay, an unemployed holder has six months to find a new job.

Third, additional time where abuse is suspected. Where authorities have reasonable grounds to believe the holder suffered particularly abusive working conditions, the authorised unemployment period is extended by a further three months.

These figures are minimums. A member state may legislate more generously; it may not legislate below them.

Read together, the three provisions change the picture. Losing the job and losing the permit used to be close to the same event, which is why a worker facing late wages or work that did not match the contract hesitated to complain at all. Three months of protection from withdrawal, plus three more where abuse is established, removes much of the basis for that hesitation.

The directive is a floor, not a ceiling

The directive does not apply to a worker directly. Each member state transposes it into national law, and that national law fixes the notification form, who files it, and the deadlines. So the operative question is not what the EU says but how the country of work has written it down.

The differences are concrete. In the Netherlands the combined permit is the GVVA, and whether the new employer holds recognised sponsor status decides much of the outcome, as set out in the Dutch GVVA route. Czechia, Croatia, and Belgium run the same directive through different documents and different offices, compared in the single permit directive explainer. Croatia shows what a national rule looks like in practice: under Article 103.d of its Aliens Act (Narodne novine 55/2026, in force since 4 June 2026), a worker who entered on the permit completes six months with the first employer before a move becomes possible, and it is the new employer who files.

The order to run a change in

One mistake repeats: leaving the old job first and notifying afterwards. The 45 day window exists so authorities can check whether the new employment meets the conditions, and having no income inside that window is the worker's risk, not the state's. Run it in this order.

• Get the new offer in writing, not as a verbal agreement.
• Confirm with the authority whether national law requires notification and who files it.
• Keep the filing date and the receipt, because the 45 days are counted from there.
• Where it is possible, do not formally end the existing employment until the written outcome arrives.

Keep one limit in view: the right operates only while the permit is valid. Once the card expires, the question is no longer a change of employer but a renewal, so the first date to check when starting a job search is the expiry printed on the permit itself.

Where work has already ended, dates decide the case. National law fixes when the three month and six month periods start running, so keep written proof of the termination from day one. How decision windows compare across destinations is set out in the country by country permit timeline, and the employer side of the same transfer is covered on the employers page.

Directive (EU) 2024/1233 moves the single permit from a document attached to an employer toward one attached to the worker. The route by which that reaches any individual holder still runs through national law, which makes reading the national transposition rule the first step before deciding to change jobs.