Seasonal work rules in Europe for Indian workers, five to nine months

Seasonal work by non EU nationals in the European Union runs under Directive 2014/36/EU. Article 14 requires every member state to set a maximum stay of between five and nine months in any twelve month period. Article 18 requires a decision within 90 days of a complete application.

Seasonal work tends to be treated as the light version of a permit, when in several respects its rules are more detailed than the ordinary route. The reason is plain. This is the category where the worker arrives for a short period, depends on the employer, and often lives in the employer's own building. So half the directive is about the permit and half about where the worker sleeps.

The numbers written into the directive

The three conditions in Article 20 have to be read together. Rent may not be excessive, it may not be automatically deducted from the wage, and a written rental contract must be given. In practice all three break at once, because a worker housed in the farm's or the hotel's own building is given no paper and the rent comes off the payroll, which is administratively easy and legally wrong.

One country in detail: Croatia

The Croatian seasonal route sits in Article 104 of the Aliens Act, published in Narodne novine 55/2026. Seasonal work runs either up to 90 days in a calendar year or up to nine months. Work of up to 90 days in agriculture, forestry, hospitality and tourism carries no labour market test. The 2026 change is not the length of the work but the length of the permit: one permit can now cover three consecutive seasons, so the same procedure does not reopen every year.

The scale is on record. Ministry of the Interior figures for the first eleven months of 2025 show 19,467 seasonal permits inside a total of 160,176 residence and work permits. Issuing the permit costs 74.32 euro, the decision deadline under Article 91(8) of the Aliens Act is 90 days, and a renewal is filed at least 15 days before expiry. In Greece the seasonal route runs on quotas and bilateral agreements, set out in the Greek seasonal quota.

Two limits of seasonal work that are felt later

First, the time does not count towards long term status. Article 3 of Directive 2003/109/EC places seasonal workers and posted workers outside the scope of long term residence. So nine months of work repeated over three years still adds nothing to the five year count.

Second, the permit is tied to the season. When the season ends, the right to stay ends with it unless another residence permit is granted. A worker who arrives expecting to stay on and look for another job is planning against something the directive does not contain.

So read three figures in any seasonal offer: the number of months, the rent, and the date the permit expires. What to check in the contract is set out in employment contract checks, and how long each country's procedure takes is in the country by country timeline. The duties on the employer side are described on the employers page.