Posting a worker from Lithuania to a client in another EU country
ManBe Group · 15 August 2026 · 3 min read
Some EU countries are close to impossible to hire blue-collar workers into directly. The Netherlands is the clearest example: the GVVA single permit requires a labour-market test proving no Dutch or EU candidate is available, and for drivers, warehousing and production that test is almost never passed.
There is another way in, and it is not a workaround — it is settled EU law. A worker who is lawfully employed in one member state can be posted to provide a service in another, and a third-country national in that position does not need a work permit in the destination state.
The principle
This comes from the Court of Justice's Vander Elst line of cases. If a company established in member state A employs a worker lawfully and habitually, and that company provides a service in member state B, the worker can be posted there without B requiring its own work permit. The worker's right to be there flows from the employer's freedom to provide services across the single market.
In practice that means a driver or a tradesperson employed by a company in Lithuania — holding a Lithuanian residence permit and genuinely on that company's payroll — carrying out a service contract for a client in the Netherlands or Germany. It is a structure the sending employer sets up and answers for. ManBe recruits for direct employment and does not post workers itself; this article explains the route so you can judge an offer of it.
What makes it lawful, and what makes it not
The distinction that matters is between providing a service and supplying a person.
A genuine posting has a service contract with a defined scope, the worker stays employed and paid by the Lithuanian entity, the Lithuanian entity keeps the employment relationship and directs the work within that contract, and the arrangement is temporary and tied to the assignment.
What it is not is a permanent placement in a Dutch or German company wearing a service contract as a costume. If the worker is integrated into the client's workforce indefinitely, taking day-to-day instruction like an employee, with the arrangement having no end, then it is not a posting and treating it as one is a real risk — to the client as much as to the agency.
The compliance that comes with it
Posting is permitted, not unregulated. The obligations are substantial and they fall on both sides.
The posting must be notified to the destination state before it starts — in the Netherlands through the WagwEU notification. The worker must receive the destination country's minimum terms: minimum wage, working time, rest, holiday and health and safety rules, which for a posting to the Netherlands or Germany usually means more than the Lithuanian minimum. A1 social security documentation must be in place. Documents must be kept available for inspection in the destination country, often in its language. And sector rules apply on top — for road transport, the specific posting rules for drivers.
Enforcement in both countries is active, and the penalties land on the client too. Anyone offering you posted workers without mentioning any of this is offering you an inspection.
When it is the right answer
For temporary peaks, defined projects and countries where direct hiring is effectively closed to your roles, it is often the only route that works. For a permanent vacancy in a country where you can hire directly, it is the wrong tool — hire directly.
Two honest caveats
First, it is more work, not less. The permit is avoided; the compliance is not.
Second, the structure has to be confirmed case by case, and a careful provider will sometimes say no. If the arrangement on offer looks like a permanent placement, treat that as the warning it is, because the cost of getting this wrong lands on you. In the Netherlands, a supplier making workers available also needs admission under the Wtta from 2027 — our GVVA guide covers what to check.
If you have a vacancy in the Netherlands or Germany and want to know whether a direct hire is realistic for it, describe it to us — that is the route we work on, and we will tell you plainly when it is not.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
- It changes which rules apply rather than removing rules. The worker is lawfully employed in Lithuania and sent to work temporarily in another member state under EU posting rules — which carry their own registration, pay and documentation obligations in the destination country.
- Posting is for temporary assignments, and the protections that apply tighten the longer it runs. It is the wrong instrument for a permanent role in the destination country, and treating it as a permanent workaround is how employers get into trouble.
- The sending company in Lithuania remains the employer. The client directs the work on site but does not take on the employment relationship — which is exactly why the contract between the two needs to say so clearly.
- No. It works where the destination country's direct route is effectively closed to the role — the Netherlands for blue-collar work being the clearest example — and it is a poor fit where a direct permit is realistically obtainable.
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