When a foreign worker leaves North Macedonia: deregistration and permit cancellation

When a foreign worker leaves, the employer reports the end of work at the employment centre covering the company seat, under the Law on Employment and Work of Foreigners, consolidated text in Official Gazette 217/2015 and 163/2021 (mtsp.gov.mk). Deregistration from compulsory social insurance is filed on form M1 or M2 through the system of the Employment Agency of the Republic of North Macedonia.

What happens to the permit

The Law on Employment and Work of Foreigners ties the work permit to the residence permit. Under article 7 paragraph 4 the permit is withdrawn and annulled if the foreigner's temporary or permanent residence permit ends, or if the foreigner does work other than the work the permit was issued for. In practice the relation also runs the other way: the employment relationship is the ground on which temporary residence for work rests, so ending the employment opens the procedure for ending residence before the Ministry of Interior.

Deregistration is therefore not paperwork that can wait until month end. An employer who keeps a foreigner recorded as active while the worker has already left the country carries the gap between the recorded and the actual position, and that gap is the first thing an inspector asks about.

The same law covers the mirror failure, which is the more expensive one. If the employer does not report the start of work, the employment relationship is deemed not to have been established, and the Employment Agency notifies the Ministry of Interior, which leads to the foreigner's residence being revoked. A missed start report and a missed end report are two ends of the same record, and both are settled at the same employment centre.

The order of steps on departure

Departure runs through the same authorities as arrival, in reverse. The employer carries three obligations: report the end of work, deregister the worker from compulsory social insurance, and close the file at the Ministry of Interior where residence ends before the permit expires.

The same M1 and M2 form used to register the worker for insurance also serves the deregistration, through the Employment Agency system. That is a practical advantage: the employer files a familiar form with a changed ground rather than hunting for a new one. It is also the source of the most common mistake, where HR treats deregistration as an internal task and lets it slip precisely because the form is routine.

The deadlines and the fines in figures

The deadlines run from the event, not from month end. The responsible person registers the end of work within 30 days of the ground for termination arising, at the same local office where the start was filed, and deregisters the work at the latest within three days of the work ending (article 16 paragraphs 12 and 14). The Employment Agency issues a confirmation of deregistration, and that confirmation is the document that stays in the employer's file.

The second deadline attaches to the work permit itself. An employer that ended the employment before the permit's validity expired must return the permit to the issuing authority within 30 days (article 7 paragraph 7). For a failure to return it, the law sets a fine of 2,000 euro in denar equivalent for an employer that is a legal entity, and 30 percent of that amount for the responsible person at the employer (article 25). The Agency issues the withdrawal decision within three days of learning of the ground and notifies the Ministry of Interior.

Fines under the Law on Foreigners (Official Gazette 97/2018, amended by 108/2019, 294/2021 and 284/2023) are lower and reach a different set of parties. After the 2021 amendments (review of the amendments, lblaw.com.mk), articles 215 to 218 run at 50 to 250 euro for a sole trader providing accommodation, 30 to 250 euro for a natural person, and 25 to 250 euro for a foreigner who fails to register or deregister a place of stay or a change of address. For a legal entity the relevant provision is article 213, where the range runs from 50 to 1,000 euro for a micro trader up to 250 to 10,000 euro for a large trader, plus 200 to 500 euro for the responsible person.

The cost employers underestimate is not the fine but the stranded residence. A foreigner holding live residence for work with an employer who no longer employs him enters the next permit application with an inconsistent record, and that record is cleared before the file moves on. The same logic applies at the other end, when registering the start of work, where the deadline is one day from the start of work.

Before a departure it is worth checking the position against social insurance registration, since the deregistration attaches to it, and against the practice of labour inspection and fines, since the period right after a worker leaves is exactly when a record stays unamended longest.

An employer with a group of contracts ending in the same week keeps the three deadlines side by side: three days for the deregistration of work, 30 days for registering the end of work, and 30 days for returning the work permit. Written into one calendar, none of the three is missed.