Directive 2014/36/EU on seasonal workers and the rules in North Macedonia

Directive 2014/36/EU governs the entry and stay of third country nationals working as seasonal workers. Article 14 requires each member state to set a maximum stay of between five and nine months in any 12 month period. Article 18 requires a decision within 90 days of a complete application.

North Macedonia is not a member state, yet the same directive is listed among the acts transposed by its Law on Foreigners, under CELEX number 32014L0036. The Macedonian seasonal regime therefore resembles the European one in construction, and differs in its figures and its scale.

What the directive requires

Article 3(c) defines seasonal work as an activity tied to a certain time of the year by a recurring event or pattern of events linked to seasonal conditions, during which required labour levels are significantly above those needed for usually ongoing operations. That is a definition by time pattern rather than by sector, so the same post in the same plant can be seasonal in one period and ordinary in another.

Article 20 governs accommodation with two concrete rules. A seasonal worker must receive accommodation that ensures an adequate standard of living under national law and practice, and where the employer arranges the housing, the rent may not be excessive compared with the worker's net remuneration and may not be automatically deducted from the wage. Article 17 requires member states to provide effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions against employers that breach their obligations, including exclusion from the seasonal worker scheme.

Where the Macedonian regime matches and where it diverges

The matches outnumber the divergences. The Macedonian ceiling of six months, or nine in construction, sits precisely inside the range the directive leaves to member states. The accommodation requirement is carried over, though without a numerical measure for rent. Refusing an opinion to an employer penalised for illegal employment plays the role that exclusion from the scheme plays in the directive.

The largest difference is not legal but quantitative. The directive prescribes no volume, but member states with heavy seasonal demand open tens of thousands of places a year, while the government decision in North Macedonia for 2026 provides 50 permits for seasonal work out of 10,000. The conditions of the Macedonian regime are set out in seasonal employment.

What this means for employers on both sides

For an employer in the Union, the 90 day deadline is an upper bound on a decision, not an average duration. In countries that run annual quotas and fixed application windows, the season is lost to the window more often than to the deadline. The Italian model with the Decreto Flussi is the clearest example and is described in the Italian quota, while the Greek two year model with bilateral corridors is described in Greece's bilateral labour quotas.

For an employer in North Macedonia the lesson runs the other way. The deadline is not the constraint; the volume is. Fifty seasonal permits mean that a harvest plan or a summer season with more than a handful of people has to go through the ordinary employment regime, with a permit of up to one year, or not go at all.

For a worker from Nepal, India or the Philippines, the difference between the two regimes comes down to one number: a seasonal permit carries no right to an extension inside the same calendar year, while an ordinary permit is extended. When the journey costs about a month of wages, a regime that allows a second year is a different offer from one that forbids it. How Werklist weighs those two calculations for employers is described on the employers page.

The directive sets a floor and a ceiling, and each state decides where between them to stand and how many places to open. The number of places, rather than the text of the directive, is usually what decides the outcome of a season.