If your company is being offered workers "through an agency" in Montenegro, the first thing to establish is which of two different legal arrangements is actually on the table. One of them leaves your company as the employer for everything. The other moves the employment contract to the agency — and still leaves your company carrying occupational safety, third-party damage, union notification, record-keeping and a set of prohibitions that, if breached, can convert an assigned worker into your permanent employee by operation of law. Breaches are penalised against the company: €2,000 to €20,000 for a legal person under Article 208(1) of the Labour Law, with separate bands for the responsible person and for an entrepreneur.
This page sets out the two arrangements, the licence test you can apply in one question, what the assignment agreement must contain, the eight cases in which it cannot lawfully be signed, and the obligations that stay with the user company whatever the commercial contract says.
Statutory basis and check date: Zakon o radu (Labour Law), Službeni list Crne Gore nos. 074/19, 008/21, 059/21, 068/21, 145/21, 077/24, 084/24, 086/24, 122/25, 165/25 and 051/26 (last amendment published 15 April 2026), read in the consolidated edition on 19 August 2026. Much of the English-language material on this subject still describes the 2019 text. Six amending laws have been published since the 2021 consolidation, and all six of them since August 2024 — so a source that stops at 145/21 is missing two years of change.
Two different things are called an "agency"
Montenegrin law separates them, and the commercial offer often does not.
| What you are comparing | Mediation (posredovanje) | Assignment (ustupanje zaposlenih) |
|---|---|---|
| Governing act | Zakon o posredovanju pri zapošljavanju i pravima za vrijeme nezaposlenosti | Zakon o radu, Arts. 52–59 |
| Who becomes the employer | Your company | The agency — Art. 52(2) |
| Who signs the employment contract | Your company, with the worker | The agency, with the worker — Art. 52(3) |
| What the intermediary sells | Introduction and process support | The worker's labour, under an agreement with your company |
| Licence needed to do it | Separate regime under that Act — not the Article 53 licence | Ministry work licence, and assignment must be the sole activity — Art. 53(2) |
| Your residual duties | All of them | Art. 19(1)(8), Art. 54, Art. 58, Art. 59(2) — set out below |
The distinction matters commercially because only the second one changes who the employer is, and even then it changes less than most agency presentations suggest.
The licence test you can run in one question
Article 53(2) is unusually strict. An agency may perform assignment work only if it performs that work as its sole activity and holds a work licence issued by the Ministry on the proposal of a licensing commission. Agencies are entered in a register kept by the Ministry (Article 53(1)), the Ministry decides on a licence application within 15 days (Article 53(5)), and the Ministry supervises their professional work (Article 207(1)).
The practical test follows directly. If the company offering you workers also builds, cleans, caters, or supplies equipment, it cannot lawfully be your assignment agency, because assignment is not its sole activity. Ask for the licence and for the register entry, and check what else the company is registered to do. Agencies that existed before the law came into force were given one year to bring their operations into line under Article 212, so age is not evidence of compliance.
What the agreement must contain, and when it cannot be signed at all
The relationship between the agency and your company runs through a written assignment agreement (sporazum) under Article 54(1). Article 54(2) fixes its minimum content: the number of workers assigned, the period of assignment, the place of work, the jobs to be performed, the occupational safety measures applied at the workplace where the work will be done, and the manner and time in which your company must deliver the payroll calculation to the agency together with the rules applied at your company for determining wages.
That last item is often missed in negotiation. The agency is the payer, but the calculation runs off your company's wage rules and your company's timetable.
Article 54(4) then lists eight situations in which the agreement cannot be concluded at all:
| # | The agreement cannot be signed where the assignment is for… |
|---|---|
| 1 | replacing workers who are on strike at your company |
| 2 | jobs for which your company made redundancies in the previous six months |
| 3 | a worker already engaged at your company under an assignment agreement within the last 24 months |
| 4 | a worker who was in an employment relationship at your company within the last 24 months |
| 5 | jobs classified as having special working conditions under occupational-safety rules, where the assigned worker does not meet those conditions |
| 6 | work falling within the agency's own registered activity |
| 7 | any case where your company is a founder of, or holds an ownership share in, the agency |
| 8 | other cases contrary to the general interest, as set by a collective agreement binding your company |
Article 54(5) disapplies items 3 and 4 for seasonal work. Item 7 is the one that ends a common structure: a group cannot set up its own assignment agency and staff itself through it. Item 2 is the one that most often surprises a company that has restructured and then tried to refill the same functions with assigned labour.
The rule that can turn an assigned worker into your permanent employee
This is the largest single exposure in the arrangement, and it is not obvious from reading Articles 52–59 alone.
Article 37(2) caps fixed-term work with the same employee at 24 months, continuous or interrupted, and Article 37(3) provides that a break shorter than 70 days does not count as a break. Article 37(4) then provides that the time an employee spent temporarily assigned to your company through an agency counts into that 24-month period. Time accrued before the law entered into force counts too, under Article 213.
Article 38(1) supplies the consequence: where a fixed-term contract or an assignment agreement is concluded contrary to Article 37 and Article 54(4) items 3 and 4, or where the worker continues working after the agreed period expires, an indefinite employment relationship is deemed to have arisen. Article 38(2) requires the employer to conclude an indefinite contract within five days of the irregularity being established or the previous contract expiring. Failure to do so is one of the offences carrying the €2,000–€20,000 band under Article 208(1)(8).
One point deserves to be flagged rather than glossed. Article 38 speaks of "the employer", and in the assignment limb the provisions it cross-refers to — Article 54(4) items 3 and 4 — are prohibitions defined by reference to your company's history, not the agency's. The commercially prudent reading is therefore that the deemed relationship arises with the user, and that is how the risk should be priced; but the text does not spell it out, and it is a question to settle in the agreement rather than after an inspection.
Note the asymmetry that makes this easy to get wrong: Article 37(8) exempts the agency's own contracts from the 24-month cap. The cap is therefore invisible from the agency's side of the file and visible only from yours. The register your company must keep under Article 19(1)(8) — of employees engaged through a temporary employment agency — is the document that makes the 24-month count auditable, which is also why an inspector will ask for it.
What stays with your company whatever the contract says
Article 58(1) is the core provision: in relation to the assigned worker, your company is deemed the employer for the purpose of applying occupational safety and health rules and the special protection of certain categories of employees. Those rules now sit in a brand-new statute — the Zakon o zaštiti i zdravlju na radu, Sl. list CG 51/2026, published 15 April 2026 and in force since 23 April 2026 — which replaced the previous regime and which most English-language guidance has not caught up with.
Three further duties sit on your company under the same article:
- inform the union or employee representative, at least once every six months, of the number of assigned workers engaged and the reasons (Article 58(2)) — an offence under Article 209(1)(15), band €1,000–€10,000 for a legal person;
- notify assigned workers of vacancies for which they qualify, on the notice board (Article 58(3));
- count assigned workers equally when trade-union representativeness is determined at your company (Article 58(4)).
Damage allocation under Article 59 is worth reading line by line, because two of the three limbs land on your company:
| Who suffers the damage | Who is liable | Article |
|---|---|---|
| The worker, at work at your company | The agency — unless the assignment agreement provides otherwise | Art. 59(1) |
| A third party, caused by the worker at your company | Your company | Art. 59(2) |
| Your company, caused by the worker | The agency | Art. 59(3) |
Article 59(1) is expressly subject to the agreement, which means the default can be moved onto your company by a clause. Article 59(2) is not qualified in the same way: third-party damage caused by an assigned worker at your site is the user company's to compensate.
Occupational-safety induction is the mirror image. Under Article 57(2) the agency must inform the worker of all safety risks at your company and train them for the job — unless the assignment agreement provides that your company will do it. The same conditional applies to instruction on new work technologies under Article 57(3). Whether that obligation sits with the agency or with you is therefore a drafting decision, and it should be a deliberate one, because Article 58(1) leaves your company answerable for the safety regime regardless of who ran the induction.
Pay: your own payroll becomes the benchmark
Article 55(4) provides that the wage of a worker assigned to your company may not be lower than the wage of your company's own employees performing the same or similar jobs at the same level of qualification. Article 55(6) extends the principle: the assigned worker's other rights and obligations may not be less favourable than those of your own employees.
The consequence for planning is straightforward. Assigned labour is not a route to a lower wage line for the same work, and the comparison an inspector makes is against your company's own payroll — a document you already hold. Rights arising from the employment relationship are otherwise realised at the agency (Article 55(2)), including compensation for periods when the worker is not assigned through no fault of their own (Article 55(5)), and the agency must pay the agreed wage even where your company has not delivered the payroll calculation or settled its invoices, with a right of recovery against your company afterwards (Article 57(4)–(5)).
The quota question to ask before you sign
Because the agency is the employer under Article 52(2), the employment relationship for a foreign assigned worker — and therefore the work permit behind it — sits with the agency, not with your company. The 2026 annual quota is allocated by economic activity, and the activity lines are very different in size: Construction 6,000 permits and Accommodation and food service 6,150, against Administrative and support service activities 415 — the section under which employee-assignment activity falls in the statistical classification of activities.
We are not asserting how the authorities apply that mapping in every case; the decision allocates permits to activities, and which line a given application draws against is a question of practice. That is precisely why it should be settled in writing before you commit to a supply arrangement rather than discovered in the middle of a season. The mechanics of the allocation, the reserve and what happens when a line is exhausted are set out in our note on how the annual quota actually works.
One route that is sometimes offered does not currently exist: supply through a temporary employment agency registered outside Montenegro is deferred until the day Montenegro accedes to the European Union. That deferral, and the filing obligations that remain with a direct employer, are covered in what the employer actually files, signs and owes.
What belongs in the agreement before you sign
- Evidence, not assurance. Ask for the Ministry work licence and the register entry, and confirm that assignment is the agency's sole registered activity (Article 53(2)).
- Run the Article 54(4) checklist against your own last 24 months — redundancies in the last six months, former employees, previously assigned workers, and any ownership link between your company and the agency.
- Decide the safety induction expressly. Article 57(2)–(3) lets the duty move to your company; silence leaves it with the agency while Article 58(1) still leaves you answerable.
- Do not accept a reversal of Article 59(1) by default. It is contractually movable; treat it as priced, not administrative.
- Fix the payroll mechanics required by Article 54(2)(6) — what your company delivers, in what form, and by when.
- Open the Article 19(1)(8) register on day one and run the 24-month count from it, including pre-assignment employment at your company.
- Diarise the six-month union notification under Article 58(2).
- Confirm the quota line in writing before the season, not during it.
If your company is being offered workers through an agency in Montenegro — or is already using one and has not run the Article 54(4) checks — send us the draft sporazum, the agency's licence and the list of the workers proposed, before signature. RoNa Legal is a registered employment intermediary (NACE 78.10) and a law office: we advise on the legal framework and coordinate with licensed agencies. We are not a licensed temporary employment agency under Article 53 and not an employer of record. You can reach us through our work permit and recruitment service page. Related notes: the penalties for unlawful engagement, what a foreign worker costs an employer and the sector guidance on construction recruitment.
