Montenegro employment agency licence rules and what employers must check
Employment mediation in Montenegro is run by the Employment Agency of Montenegro and licensed private agencies, and the service is free for jobseekers.
Employment mediation in Montenegro is carried out by the Employment Agency of Montenegro and by private agencies holding a licence, under the Law on Employment Mediation and Rights During Unemployment. The licence is issued by the ministry responsible for labour. The mediation service is free of charge for unemployed persons and jobseekers.
Who may mediate, and on what conditions
The law names two actors. The first is the Employment Agency of Montenegro, which keeps the unemployment records and mediates as a public service. The second is a private agency, which may carry out the same work only after the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare issues it a licence.
The conditions on premises, staff and technical equipment are set by the ministry responsible for labour. The agency must report any change in those circumstances, because the licence is issued against a verified state of affairs rather than granted permanently. The law also restricts who may found an agency: a person sentenced to at least 6 months of imprisonment cannot establish one, and the founder of an agency whose licence has been withdrawn cannot establish a new one within the period the law prescribes.
The third rule is the one employers most often read wrongly. Mediation is free for the unemployed person and the jobseeker. The agency charges its fee to the employer. Any amount collected from the worker, whether framed as a registration fee, document handling or the cost of the vacancy, falls outside the law and returns to the employer as exposure in an inspection.
What the employer checks before signing
Vetting an agency takes less time than one round of correspondence about price, and it belongs before signature rather than after the first permit problem.
| Check | Where it is verified | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Mediation licence | Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare | Without a licence the agency may not mediate |
| Fee charged to the employer | Mediation contract | Charging the worker is not permitted by law |
| Who files the permit application | Contract and power of attorney | The employer files, the agency does not file in its place |
| Who is the employer in the contract | Draft employment contract | The worker is employed by you, except in agency assignment |
| Agency registered in Montenegro | Central Register of Business Entities | A foreign temporary work agency cannot assign workers |
The last row carries a change that is easy to miss. The 2025 draft amendments to the Law on Foreigners, in Article 27, postpone the assignment of foreign workers through a temporary work agency registered outside Montenegro until the country joins the European Union. An employer who planned to take workers through an agency registered in another state does not have that model available for now. The worker is employed by the company in Montenegro, and the agency stays in the role of intermediary.
Where the liability stays with the employer
Mediation does not transfer the duties of the employment relationship. The application for the temporary residence and work permit is filed by the employer, the permit is issued in the employer's name and for specified duties, and the employment contract is concluded by the employer. An agency can prepare documents and handle correspondence, but the labour inspectorate addresses the employer. How the procedure runs and what the file must state is covered in our guide to the temporary residence and work permit procedure.
The second cost an agency cannot absorb is the quota. The number of permits by sector is capped by the annual government decision, so an agency promising workers in a sector where the quota is exhausted is promising a date that does not depend on it. How the quota is set and allocated for the current year is set out in our note on the annual foreign worker quota.
The costly version of this looks as follows. An employer signs with an unlicensed agency, the agency collects fees from workers in the origin country, the workers arrive, and an inspection finds that the charging was unlawful and that some of them are working on duties outside the permit. The employer pays the fine, the permits are reopened, and the workers lose the basis for their stay. The penalty ranges and how those facts are established are set out in our guide to labour inspection and fines.
A licence check and one careful reading of the mediation contract remove most of this risk before it forms. How we run those checks before a file enters the procedure is set out on the employers page.
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