New employee never showed up for the first day: contract, visa and the vacancy

Does the employment contract end if your new hire never arrives in Germany?

No. An employment contract stays in force until it is ended, even if the agreed first day passes and nobody turns up. German law makes the contract a mutual promise: the employee owes work, you owe the agreed wage (§ 611a BGB). A cancelled flight, an unanswered phone or a candidate who simply goes quiet does not undo that promise.

Three things can end such a contract: a written termination notice, a written termination agreement, or an agreed end date. A fixed-term contract ends when the agreed period expires (§ 15 TzBfG). Until one of these applies, the person is formally your employee. Your documentation duties also run from the agreed start, not from the day someone actually shows up: the essential terms must be given to the employee by the first day of work, the seventh calendar day and one month after the agreed start (§ 2 NachwG).

Can you end a German employment contract by email before the first working day?

An email or a messenger message does not end a German employment contract. Termination notices and termination agreements require the written form with a signature on paper; the electronic form is expressly excluded (§ 623 BGB). Send the signed original and keep proof of delivery.

• Basic notice period: four weeks to the 15th or to the end of a calendar month (§ 622 BGB).
• Probationary period: if you agreed one, it may last no longer than six months; during it the notice period is two weeks (§ 622 BGB).
• Collective agreements can set different periods (§ 622 BGB).
• Termination for good cause without notice is provided for by law, but whether good cause exists depends on the circumstances and a weighing of both sides' interests (§ 626 BGB).
• General dismissal protection applies only once the employment relationship has existed for more than six months without interruption in the same establishment or company (§ 1 KSchG); the Act also contains establishment size thresholds.

When the notice period starts if work never began is a question for the individual case. Have the letter checked before you send it, especially the date on which you want the contract to end.

Do you owe wages to an employee in Germany who never started work?

As a general rule, no wage is owed for work that was never performed. German contract law ties the duty to pay to the performance owed and sets out the exceptions in the same provision, for example where the employer is in default of acceptance (§ 326 BGB). Whether such an exception applies to your case depends on the facts and should be checked.

Do not pay out of caution to make the matter go away. Document the no-show instead: the agreed start date, your attempts to reach the person, and the reply you did or did not get. That file is what your payroll office, your lawyer and, if it comes to it, the authorities will ask for. Whether you can recover costs you already spent is an individual-case question with no blanket answer.

Do you have to inform the immigration authority when a hire from abroad does not start?

Yes, if a residence title for this employment had already been issued. The Residence Act obliges employers to inform the competent immigration authority within four weeks of becoming aware that employment for which a residence title for gainful employment was granted has ended early (§ 4a AufenthG). The national visa is itself a residence title (§ 4 AufenthG), so the duty can arise before the person has worked a single day.

A residence title that is never used does not stay valid indefinitely. It lapses, among other reasons, when its period of validity expires, when a condition subsequent occurs, or on withdrawal or revocation (§ 51 AufenthG). The Residence Act also provides for revocation of a visa or residence permit for employment where the Federal Employment Agency has withdrawn its approval (§ 52 AufenthG). What happens in the specific case is decided by the authority, not by you — our page on who decides what when you hire from abroad sets out the division of roles.

Candidate drops out before the visa is issued or after: what changes for the employer

In both situations the first practical step is the same: put the end of the contract in writing and keep proof that it reached the person.

Can you reuse the labour market approval for another candidate, or does the process start again?

An approval granted for a specific employment relationship lapses when that relationship ends (§ 35 BeschV). You cannot hand it over to the next candidate. The Federal Employment Agency can also restrict an approval by period of validity, establishment, occupation, employer, region and working time (§ 34 BeschV). An approval tied to one person and one job is of no use for someone else.

For the next person the paperwork starts from the beginning: a new employment contract, a new employer declaration on the job offer, and a new decision by the Federal Employment Agency. Employers can apply to the agency for a pre-approval; if the agency agrees, it issues the pre-approval together with the declaration of the employment relationship for you to pass on to your future employee. The agency decides in each individual case. For nationals of Albania and Kosovo the Western Balkans rule can come into play (§ 26 BeschV), and here too the Federal Employment Agency decides.

Plan the restart with the lead time in mind, and keep the job description, salary and working hours consistent with what you declare. Our page on why hiring from abroad takes so long shows which steps run one after the other.

Which registrations and records do you have to correct after a no-show?

Correct every notification that was based on a start which never happened. The social security notification rules require a notification to be cancelled without delay if it should not have been filed or contains incorrect details, for example on the period of employment; the cancellation is made by the office that filed it (DEÜV). Ask your payroll office for written confirmation that the cancellation went out.

In the haulage, transport and logistics sector, including platform-based delivery services, the day the employment starts must be reported to the pension insurance data centre at the latest when work is taken up. Intentional and reckless breaches of this immediate notification duty can be fined, as the customs administration explains. If you filed such a notification for someone who never arrived, it has to be corrected too.

• The signed employment contract and the written termination or termination agreement, with proof of delivery
• Your correspondence with the immigration authority and the Federal Employment Agency
• Copies of residence documents you were given — see how long you keep a copy of the residence permit
• Confirmation that social security notifications were cancelled

If you want to put the vacancy back on the market with candidates from Albania and Kosovo, you can register as an employer and tell us what the role needs.