31.01.2024
REQUIREMENTS FOR ENTERPRISES PROVIDING EMPLOYMENT INTERMEDIARY SERVICES
The services provided by employment agencies have a long tradition in Bulgaria.
The regulation of the intermediary activity started as early as 2003 with the adoption of the Employment Promotion Act. The intermediary activity aims to make a connection between the person looking for a job and the employer who needs a workforce.
Staffing services from temporary employment agencies and intermediary services differ significantly, although in practice the two legal figures are often conflated.
Intermediary activity is expressed in providing assistance to jobseekers and employers offering jobs, with the aim of concluding an employment contract. To carry out this activity, the intermediary deals with informing and/or consulting job seekers and employers; psychological support for job seekers; referral to adult education; guidance and support for starting work, including in another populated place in the country or in other countries. The listed services can be provided together or separately, aiming only at the conclusion of an employment contract between the employer and the employee, but not binding the mediator with any of the parties thereafter.
The mediator has the right to send workers and employees to perform work under the conditions of the first and second category of work in enterprises related to national security or in enterprises where a strike is taking place. It should be emphasized that the mediation of employment of persons of the second category, such as seafarers, is an activity that is regulated in detail in the law and can be considered one of the main ones carried out by these persons in Bulgaria.
The main difference between an enterprise providing temporary work and an intermediary is the type of legal relationship that is established between them and the employees. In the legal definition of an enterprise providing temporary work, which is adopted in the law, it is explicitly defined that the enterprise concludes an employment contract with the worker or employee. Therefore, the legal relationship between an enterprise providing temporary work and the employed person is undoubtedly an employment legal relationship, although it has its own characteristics, which are determined by the performance of the work of the worker or employee in the user enterprise.
Between the intermediary and the job seeker there can be no question of an employment relationship. The persons enter into a mediation contract, which by its characteristics is a civil contract, and its subject does not contain an obligation to provide labor on the part of the job seeker. This contract is for the provision of an intermediary service with a view to the eventual commencement of work.
The mediator has no right to demand fees or any kind of remuneration from the worker or employee for placing him in a job with an employer or a user enterprise.
The contract between the mediator and the employer also has statutory minimum requirements. For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that there are requirements for the mediation contract only if persons are sent to work abroad, as the legislation does not contain requirements for the mediation contract for a Bulgarian employer.
The mediator and the person looking to hire a worker may not have the status of traders and the contract they enter into will not be commercial. This will be the case, for example, when a family is looking to employ a nanny or nurse, and the person providing employment services is not registered as a trader.
Reference:
Chapter Six, Section I of the Law on the Promotion of Employment and in the Ordinance on the Conditions and Procedures for Carrying Out Intermediary Activity on Employment
para 1, item 17 of the Additional Provisions of the Labor Code
Art. 23, para. 2; Art. 30, para. 3 of the Ordinance on the Conditions and Procedures for Carrying Out Intermediary Activity on Employment
