The EU Temporary Agency Work Directive (2008/104/EC) applies to workers who are in an employment relationship with a temporary work agency and who are assigned to a company to work temporarily under its supervision and direction.

Albania is bringing its legislation into line with EU law, but has not yet introduced into national labour legislation specific regulations dealing with temporary agency work, as per the directive. Although new draft amendments to the Labour Code explicitly incorporate temporary agency work, such amendments have been caught up in bureaucracy on their way to Parliament.

Albanian law provides for the existence of private employment agencies (ie, recruitment firms), granting them an intermediary role in the labour market (as per Government Decision 708/2003on the Licensing and Functioning of Private Employment Agencies), but their remit comprises placing an employee with a potential employer for a fixed or
indefinite period. Therefore, they differ from temporary work agencies, which employ and manage the contingent workforce in order to assign members temporarily to a company.

Notwithstanding this, the Labour Code provides for the secondment of an employee to another employer. It provides that the seconding employer may put an employee at the disposal of the host employer under a secondment agreement, after having obtained the employee's consent. The seconding employer must ensure that the host employer provides to the secondee the same working conditions as apply to its own employees performing the same category of work.

Further, the host employer owes the secondee the same duties regarding health protection, safety and hygiene as it owes its own employees.Thus, the host employer must ensure that the secondee has similar working conditions and treatment to those employees who are already performing the same work for it.

If the seconding employer does not fulfil its obligations towards the secondee, both employers shall be held jointly liable towards the secondee. Although the secondment provisions of the Labour Code and the EU directive appear to provide for the procurement of the same service, they have some basic differences.

Under the Labour Code, the employee is employed not to be temporarily assigned to another employer to work under its supervision and direction (Article 3.1 (c) of the directive), but rather to perform a specific job for the seconding employer (under an employment contract for a limited or unlimited duration). On the other hand, under the Labour Code the parties to the secondment agreement have the same state: they are both employers (ie, undertakings) and thus neither of them qualifies as a temporary work agency under Article 3.1(c) of the directive.

Moreover, the Labour Code does not set down an information obligation in case of vacant positions at the host employer, and does not provide that the prevention of conclusion of an employment contract between the secondee and the host employer after the secondment may be declared null and void (under Articles 6.1 and 6.2 of the directive).

For further information please contact Emirjon Marku at Boga & Associates by telephone (+355 4225 1050), fax (+355 4225 1055) or email (emarku@bogalaw.com). The Boga & Associates' website can be accessed at www.bogalaw.com.

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