The Greek Migration Code 5038/2023 seen from the employer side: categories E.1 to E.5
Law 5038/2023 has applied since 31 March 2024 and replaced Law 4251/2014. Categories E.1 to E.5 decide which permit a Greek employer has to request.
Law 5038/2023 (Government Gazette A' 81 of 1 April 2023) took effect on 31 March 2024 and replaced Law 4251/2014. For an employer the practical consequence is single: every hire of a third-country national is now filed under a lettered residence permit category, and that category fixes the document list, the duration and the competent office.
The Ministry of Migration and Asylum codified the categories in circular 95391 of 20 March 2024, days before the Code began to apply. The Code also transposes Directive 2011/98/EU on the single permit, meaning one document that carries both the right to reside and the right to work for a named employer.
What actually changed for the company
The previous law had absorbed ten years of amendments, and the permit types read as a list of exceptions. Law 5038/2023 grouped them. Group E covers residence for employment and professional activity, and almost every file a Greek company opens sits inside it.
The second change is the shared employment approval step. Before any group E permit for salaried work is issued, the company goes through the employment approval, the metaklisi. The request is filed by the employer and not by the worker, and the order of the steps is set out in the E.4 metaklisi procedure.
The third change is that the occupation and the employer are binding. Category, occupation and employer are written into the approval and carried unchanged into the entry visa and the residence permit. A later correction is not a supplementary document, it is a new file.
The five categories of group E
Categories E.1 to E.5 cover salaried, seasonal and highly qualified work, all resting on the employment approval of Law 5038/2023. The table below shows which category fits which case.
| Category | Who it covers | Who moves the file |
|---|---|---|
| E.1 | EU Blue Card, highly qualified posts with a salary threshold | Employer and worker together |
| E.2 | Intra-corporate transfer of a manager or specialist inside a group | The host company in Greece |
| E.3 | Special regimes such as researchers and posted workers | The host institution |
| E.4 | Salaried work through metaklisi, the standard hiring route | Employer |
| E.5 | Provision of services or works, and independent economic activity | The third-country national |
The choice is not a matter of preference. If the post is salaried work on a site or in a production plant, the route is E.4 and it passes through the annual quota. How many positions opened per sector and region is shown in the metaklisi quota.
Timeline, cost and competent office
Joint ministerial decision 133226/2024 (Gazette B' 2626 of 2 May 2024) was issued under article 27 paragraph 1 of Law 5038/2023 and sets the document list for the metaklisi. Until it appeared, local offices applied different lists per region, and the first weeks of the Code, from 31 March 2024 to May 2024, were the least predictable.
Cost on a standard salaried route starts with the 200 euro fee per third-country national for the employment approval and continues with the residence permit fee and the entry visa charge. The full sum, including translation and certification of documents, is broken down in the cost of hiring a third-country worker.
The employment approval and the residence permit are decided by the Decentralised Administration of the place of work, through the one stop services of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum. The consular leg belongs to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is judged separately, after the approval.
The most common error in the first months of application was filing with the document list of Law 4251/2014. The old law ceased to apply on 31 March 2024, those files were rejected as incomplete, and the company started again, losing a full examination cycle. Before collecting documents, confirm which group E category the post falls under and which decision currently sets its list. The employers page shows how that work is divided between the company and us.
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