Employer notification duties for a foreign hire in Lithuania

Under article 62(8) of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens, information on a foreign worker who is employed or posted, and on the termination of the contract, reaches the Migration Department, the State Labour Inspectorate and the Employment Service through the SODRA information system. There is no separate letter to three institutions. Three separate deadlines still apply.

One channel, three recipients

Article 62(8) creates a single data path. The employer files through the SODRA information system, and the Migration Department, the State Labour Inspectorate and the Employment Service draw the data from there. The practical consequence is that the start and end dates of social insurance stop being an accounting matter: they become the primary evidence of whether the worker was employed by the company named on the permit.

The inspection logic follows from that. Article 63(1)(9) treats a gap of more than 90 days in any 180 without social insurance as a circumstance relevant to permit decisions. A quietly broken insurance line is a visible event, even when nobody reported it. An employer who moves a worker between group entities and leaves a few weeks uninsured will meet that gap again later, when the change of permit file is examined.

So the first step when taking on a first foreign worker is not a document folder but an allocation of responsibility: who files the SODRA notifications, and how quickly that person learns about a termination. When those two functions sit in different departments, deadlines are missed through delay in passing information on, not through ignorance of the rule. The wider sponsorship chain in the EU context is set out in what employer sponsorship involves.

Three deadlines worth knowing from memory

The first deadline guards against files that never turn into work. Article 36(3)(1) requires the employer to notify the Migration Department within 7 days if the worker did not arrive or was not employed more than 10 days after the arrival date stated in the file. The clock runs from the date the employer itself gave, so a loosely estimated arrival date creates a duty the company never planned for.

The second deadline sits with the worker. Article 36(1)(3) requires the foreign national to report the end of the employment relationship within 10 working days if he intends to use the right to change employer. The duty is his, the consequence is shared: if he files nothing, the next employer ends up with a candidate whose status is unclear. Put the date in writing on the day of termination, together with the day from which those 10 working days run.

The third deadline is factual rather than legal. SODRA notifications on the start and end of insurance follow the ordinary social insurance filing terms, and they are what closes, or leaves open, the data line under article 62(8).

What a missed notification costs

The sanction here is not only a fine. Article 63(1)(4) provides that two occasions in a year of breaching the rules on employing or reporting foreign workers close the door to new permits for 1 year. Two separate episodes inside twelve months are enough for a company to lose the ability to hire third country workers for a year, however many roles are already agreed and however many candidates are waiting.

The typical sequence is undramatic. In February one candidate's arrival is cancelled and nobody tells the Migration Department, because the file is simply forgotten. In September, after an inspection, the State Labour Inspectorate records a second breach over inaccurate data on a posted worker. No third episode is needed: article 63(1)(4) already applies, and next season's hiring plan stops. There is no early rehabilitation procedure, which is why the cheapest control is a calendar reminder against every arrival date stated in a file.

The permit route that triggers all of these duties is described in the employer path to a temporary residence permit for work, and for highly qualified staff the additional rules are in Lithuania's EU Blue Card thresholds.

Reporting in Lithuania is simple on paper and expensive in practice, because the clocks start on events that HR hears about last. When the same person owns both the SODRA filings and the tracking of arrival dates, the 7 day and 10 working day terms become routine.