You found the engineer in Berlin, the designer in Paris, the sales lead in Madrid. Spinning up a local entity to employ them takes three to six months and €20–50k in legal. We become the legal employer instead. Your hire signs a locally-compliant contract, gets paid in EUR on local payroll, and accrues every statutory benefit — live in five business days.
A typical "let's just open a GmbH" plan looks fast on paper. Then the law firm bills, the Berlin accountant bills, a works-council requirement shows up, and three quarters later nobody has shipped the hire. Here's the real comparison.
For a standard EU hire in a covered jurisdiction, this is the default cadence. Some countries (notably Belgium and Italy) add days for sector-specific filings. Most everywhere else lands in five.
Candidate countersigns. We draft the local employment contract in parallel.
Jurisdiction-specific clauses, works council notifications, statutory entitlements baked in.
Identity, right-to-work, criminal, reference checks run against local registries. Results in 2–3 days.
Monthly run scheduled, statutory contributions wired, health and pension carriers picked.
Hire is fully on record. First payslip goes out at month-end. You get one monthly invoice.
Days 1–2 are contract. We take your hire's offer letter and convert it into a locally-compliant employment agreement — German § 611a BGB, French Code du travail, Spanish Estatuto de los Trabajadores, whatever the jurisdiction requires.
Days 3–4 are operational. Background checks run against local registries. Payroll gets scheduled. Statutory benefits — sick pay, pension, meal vouchers, 13th-month — are wired in where the country requires them.
Day 5 is launch. Your hire starts work. You get a named HR ops lead on Slack, one monthly invoice for everything, and a locally-qualified counsel behind us if a works council or termination question ever comes up.
EOR is the legal employment layer. Payroll is included. Benefits and background checks are the typical adds. Contractor of Record is the cheaper alternative for engagements that legitimately read as B2B.
FTEs · 27 EU states + UK · locally-compliant contracts · works councils · statutory benefits.
Monthly runs in EUR, GBP, or local. Tax withheld and filed. Payslips in the employee's language.
Private health, pension, meal vouchers, life & disability, wellness stipends — designed per country.
Identity, right-to-work, criminal, credit, sanctions, references. GDPR-native, 3-day turnaround.
Compliant B2B agreements · classification shield · invoice and payment flows · indemnified.
If you haven't already — hiring an EU employee typically requires GDPR Art. 27 representation too.
No — the opposite. EOR is the proper employment path. Your hire signs a real employment contract, gets statutory benefits, accrues holiday, and has the full protection of local labor law. Contractor workarounds are the thing EOR prevents: they create misclassification risk where a genuine employee is called a contractor to dodge costs.
If the engagement is genuinely B2B — multi-client, invoicing through their own limited company, controlling their own tools and hours — Contractor of Record works. If you need them full-time, exclusively, 40 hours a week, under your direction, that's an employment relationship and EOR is the legally correct path.
Usually yes. Hiring your first EU employee typically coincides with GDPR Article 27 obligations (processing employee personal data from outside the EU). We bundle both — EOR plus GDPR Representative — for first-hire customers.
Yes, but the rules are the local rules. German, French, and Spanish dismissal require cause, written notice, sometimes a works council consultation, and statutory severance. We run the process to the letter — which is usually slower than a US at-will termination, but it's the law of the jurisdiction you hired in. We also warn you up front of the timeline.
Your US cap table issues options to the employee directly. We handle local tax treatment — some jurisdictions (Ireland, France) have tax-advantaged regimes; others (Germany) tax at grant. We'll map your plan to each hire's country at onboarding so nobody gets surprised by a tax bill.
Common. We migrate employees into your newly-formed local entity when you're ready — usually at the start of a new payroll cycle. Continuity is preserved (tenure, accrued holiday, benefits). It's the Establish path, which many of our customers take 18–24 months in.
30-minute discovery call. We'll look at your hire, their jurisdiction, and quote the full first-year cost — offer to paycheck — in writing.