The A1 certificate for postings to Germany and Austria

The A1 certificate records which social security system a posted worker belongs to. Under Article 12 of Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 the worker stays under the law of the sending state where the work is not expected to exceed 24 months. Austria requires the certificate on site.

For employers with third country workforces the A1 is where two bodies of law meet: European social security coordination, which settles only which system applies, and national foreign employment law, which settles labour market access. An A1 does not replace a work authorisation, and a work authorisation does not replace an A1.

What separates Article 12 from Article 13

Article 12 covers the classic posting: a company sends an employee to another member state for a defined project and keeps paying contributions at home. The limit is an anticipated duration of 24 months, and the replacement clause prevents a company from filling the same post permanently by rotating posted workers through it. The same rule applies by analogy to self employed people carrying out a similar activity in another member state.

Article 13 covers the other case: people who normally work in two or more member states. There is no maximum duration here. What counts is where the substantial part of the activity lies, where the employer is registered and where the person lives. International drivers and fitters moving between sites almost always fall under Article 13 rather than Article 12, and a certificate applied for under Article 12 is then the wrong document.

What has to be on site

Austria is the stricter of the two markets, not on the A1 itself but on its availability. Under the Anti Wage and Social Dumping Act the following must be held at the place of deployment in German or English: a copy of the notification to the Central Coordination Office, form A1, the employment contract or written statement of terms, payslips, proof of payment, working time records, and the documents showing pay classification. If they are missing, the district administrative authority imposes a fine of up to 20,000 euro. The notification itself must be filed before work begins and exclusively by electronic form through the Federal Ministry of Finance.

In Germany the customs undeclared work unit examines the same situation from a different angle. There the identity duty under section 2a of the Undeclared Work Act comes first, together with the working time records under the Minimum Wage Act, which must be held in Germany in German. What the inspectors open up in detail is set out in customs inspections for undeclared work.

Third country nationals fall outside the notification route

The most expensive error concerns workers from Nepal, India, the Philippines or the Western Balkans who are employed by a company in an EU state and are to be posted from there to Austria. For them the notification to the Central Coordination Office is not the route. The Foreign Employment Act instead requires a posting authorisation or an employment permit, applied for by the Austrian client with the Public Employment Service.

A posting authorisation is available where the project does not exceed six months, the individual worker stays no more than four months, the work is not in construction, and the applicable pay and working conditions are observed. Where those periods are exceeded, or where the work is construction, an employment permit is required: before work starts in construction, and otherwise before the end of the fourth month. If the Public Employment Service refuses, the employment must end within two weeks. Breaches carry administrative fines of 1,000 to 10,000 euro, and 2,000 to 20,000 euro for a repeat.

The distinction also fixes the planning order. The A1 is applied for once it is settled that the person may be deployed at all, not before. Some companies do the reverse, treat the A1 as the authorisation, and discover on site that the labour market side is missing. What else a cross border move requires is described in the relocation chain for a non-EU hire, and the Austrian penalty ranges in detail sit in wage inspections under Austria's LSD-BG.

The A1 is a narrow document with a narrow message. It says who receives the contributions, and nothing else. Which documents belong beside it in the folder a crew takes to an Austrian or German site is set out on our employers page.