AÜG License Without Risk: Submit Your Application Correctly — Avoid Rejection

Apply for an AÜG License – Quickly, Securely, and Without Delays

Many appli­ca­tions for a labour leas­ing (AÜG) license fail not because of the law itself, but because of how they are imple­ment­ed: incom­plete doc­u­men­ta­tion, incor­rect con­tract tem­plates, an inac­cu­rate descrip­tion of the busi­ness mod­el, or a lack of proof of finan­cial capac­i­ty. The result: months of delays or out­right rejection.

Yet the require­ments are clear — but strict: The Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency scru­ti­nizes your reli­a­bil­i­ty, liq­uid­i­ty, and orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture very close­ly. Those who take a strate­gic approach here get the license quick­ly. Those who do it “some­how” waste time and money.

We get your appli­ca­tion right — legal­ly sound, com­plete, and proven in prac­tice in hun­dreds and hun­dreds of cases.

Request a free ini­tial assess­ment now and avoid com­mon mis­takes. Con­tact us by email or sim­ply give us a call.

Fast license approvals don’t happen by chance

In prac­tice, the require­ments of the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency are often under­es­ti­mat­ed. What mat­ters isn’t just that the doc­u­ments are sub­mit­ted — it’s how the com­pa­ny, the orga­ni­za­tion, and the busi­ness mod­el are pre­sent­ed. This is pre­cise­ly where most delays, fol­low-up inquiries, or rejec­tions occur.

We have been assist­ing com­pa­nies with AÜG license appli­ca­tions for over 25 years — in a struc­tured, proven man­ner and with a clear focus on rapid approval. In total, we have han­dled more than 1,000 cas­es in the AÜG field. Our team com­bines many years of prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence with a sol­id legal back­ground and a deep under­stand­ing of the actu­al process­es involved in AÜG procedures.

When appli­ca­tions are ful­ly pre­pared, approval is often grant­ed with­in about 3 weeks of the application’s receipt by the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency. In con­trast, incom­plete doc­u­men­ta­tion, unclear struc­tures, or an unre­li­able pre­sen­ta­tion of liq­uid­i­ty reg­u­lar­ly lead to fol­low-up inquiries, delays, or rejections.

Over 1,000 AÜG cases. A clear focus.

Labour leas­ing has been a cen­tral focus of our prac­tice for many years. We advise com­pa­nies nation­wide on apply­ing for, struc­tur­ing, and secur­ing AÜG licens­es — from the ini­tial appli­ca­tion through to com­plex pro­ce­dur­al and review situations.

Our clients ben­e­fit not only from our legal exper­tise but, above all, from our exten­sive prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence gained from real-world pro­ceed­ings with the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency.

Experience that companies trust

• Over 1,000 cas­es han­dled in the field of tem­po­rary employment
• More than 25 years of pro­fes­sion­al experience
• A team of spe­cial­ized prac­ti­tion­ers with a sol­id the­o­ret­i­cal background
• List­ed in Best Lawyers and Germany’s Best Law Firms (Han­dels­blatt)

Why AÜG applications often fail

Most prob­lems do not arise from the law — but from the appli­ca­tion itself. Some typ­i­cal mis­takes in prac­tice:

• Incom­plete or incor­rect­ly struc­tured appli­ca­tion documents
• Errors in the selec­tion of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments and equal pay provisions
• Insuf­fi­cient proof of finan­cial capacity
• Insuf­fi­cient exper­tise
• Pri­or issues due to pre­vi­ous crim­i­nal or admin­is­tra­tive penal­ty pro­ceed­ings or insolvencies
• Miss­ing or implau­si­ble orga­ni­za­tion­al structure
• Late or incor­rect sub­mis­sion of required cer­tifi­cates
• Errors in the required con­tracts

This often leads to months-long delays or even rejec­tion of the appli­ca­tion.

The Time Factor

We don’t think in legal terms — we think from the per­spec­tive of the review­ing author­i­ty. And we keep your finan­cial inter­ests in mind.

We struc­ture your appli­ca­tion so that the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nizes the key points:

• Reli­a­bil­i­ty clear­ly and robust­ly documented
• Liq­uid­i­ty pre­sent­ed in a trans­par­ent and ver­i­fi­able manner
• Cer­tifi­cates obtained by us (where pos­si­ble), reviewed, and submitted
• Con­tract selec­tion unam­bigu­ous and suit­able for the company
• Orga­ni­za­tion pre­sent­ed in a plau­si­ble and prac­ti­cal manner
• Our con­tract tem­plates are rec­og­nized by the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency. This avoids lengthy indi­vid­ual reviews.

As a result, we can facil­i­tate a quick, smooth approval process with­out unnec­es­sary fol­low-up inquiries. Often with­in three weeks! The rea­son: The Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency does not need to con­duct “fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions” but can make a deci­sion direct­ly.

Who We Work For

Our clients include, among others:

• Staffing agen­cies (Start-ups and expansion)
• Com­pa­nies with project-based staffing
• Cor­po­rate struc­tures / spin-offs
• Com­pa­nies with inter­faces to ser­vice contracts

Free Initial Assessment

Have your case briefly assessed:

• Real­is­tic assess­ment of success
• Infor­ma­tion on risks and weaknesses
• Clear rec­om­men­da­tion on how to proceed

Call us or send a short email for a free ini­tial assessment!

Do you want to apply for or pur­chase a tem­po­rary staffing license? You’ll find all the impor­tant infor­ma­tion you need on this page. We look for­ward to guid­ing you through the process of obtain­ing your license! Let us pro­vide you with a cus­tomized quote for your license application.

AMETHYST Recht­san­wälte is a Berlin-based law firm spe­cial­iz­ing in tem­po­rary staffing. Our prac­tice focus­es on pro­vid­ing nation­wide and inter­na­tion­al sup­port to com­pa­nies through­out the appli­ca­tion process for a labour leas­ing license. This license is issued by the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency and is ini­tial­ly valid for one year.

What do I need to know about applying for a license and the AÜG?

Labour Leas­ing Explained
Appli­ca­tion Process
Required Doc­u­ments
Scope of Review
Issues
Licens­ing Require­ment
Tem­po­rary Empoy­ment Exempt from Licens­ing
Pro­hi­bi­tions
Costs
Shelf Com­pa­ny

What is labor leasing (AUG)?

Labor leas­ing accord­ing to the Ger­man “Arbeit­nehmerüber­las­sungs­ge­setz” is a form of employ­ment where work­ers are employed by agen­cies (tem­po­rary work agen­cies) which in turn hire them out to a third par­ty (the client com­pa­ny) where they work tem­porar­i­ly under the client company’s direc­tion and super­vi­sion. The tem­po­rary work­er is con­sid­ered an employ­ee of the agency, not of the hir­ing com­pa­ny. Dur­ing his employ­ment rela­tion­ship the tem­po­rary work­er can be hired out to sev­er­al client com­pa­nies. Once such work is per­formed cross-bor­der, it rep­re­sents a transna­tion­al tem­po­rary work agency.

Accord­ing to the AÜG a labor leas­ing agency intend­ing to make the ser­vice of tem­po­rary work­ers avail­able to third par­ties on a com­mer­cial basis, requires a license issued by the respec­tive Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency (Bun­de­sagen­tur für Arbeit). In case an agency sup­plies a tem­po­rary work­er with­out the required license the employ­ment con­tract between the agency and the work­er is null and void. Instead, an employ­ment rela­tion­ship between the client com­pa­ny and the work­er comes about which begins on the date agreed upon by the agency and the client com­pa­ny (Sec. 10 (1) 1 AÜG).

Application Process

When estab­lish­ing a com­pa­ny (specif­i­cal­ly, a staffing agency), the first step is to choose the legal form (part­ner­ship or cor­po­ra­tion). Next, an appli­ca­tion for a tem­po­rary staffing license (AÜG license) must be sub­mit­ted to the rel­e­vant Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency; this license is manda­to­ry before tem­po­rary staffing oper­a­tions can begin.

For cor­po­ra­tions (GmbH), the appli­ca­tion is usu­al­ly processed only after entry in the com­mer­cial reg­is­ter. The result­ing delays can often be avoid­ed in urgent cas­es by sub­mit­ting an appli­ca­tion for a license sub­ject to revo­ca­tion. If the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency approves this appli­ca­tion, the required doc­u­men­ta­tion can be sub­mit­ted at a lat­er date.

Under no cir­cum­stances should labour leas­ing activ­i­ties begin before the license is grant­ed; doing so would jus­ti­fy the imme­di­ate denial or rejec­tion of the license.

Required Documents

• Arti­cles of Association
• Cer­tifi­cate of Good Conduct
• Extract from the Cen­tral Trade Reg­is­ter for the appli­cant and legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a company
• Extract from the Com­mer­cial Register
• Cer­tifi­cate from the health insur­ance provider with which the major­i­ty of employ­ees are insured, pro­vid­ed that con­tri­bu­tions have already been paid,
• Con­sent form for obtain­ing infor­ma­tion from the tax office
• Cer­tifi­cate from the employ­ers’ lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance association
• Proof of liq­uid assets, e.g., imme­di­ate­ly avail­able funds or con­fir­ma­tion of a line of cred­it for an over­draft facil­i­ty or work­ing cap­i­tal loan. With regard to cred­it­wor­thi­ness, proof of at least € 15,000 in liq­uid assets must be pro­vid­ed. This applies when intend­ing to employ up to five tem­po­rary work­ers. If there are more than five tem­po­rary work­ers, € 3,000 in liq­uid assets must be demon­strat­ed for each tem­po­rary worker.
• Con­tract tem­plates of employ­ment con­tract and the labour leas­ing frame­work agreement.

Competent authority for granting an AÜG license

Depend­ing on where the reg­is­tered office of the for­eign enter­prise is locat­ed, the comepe­tence for issu­ing a license differs.

Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency	Com­pe­tent for com­pa­nies with reg­is­tered office locat­ed in…
Düs­sel­dorf	Poland, Great Britain and Ire­land, Nether­lands, Mal­ta, Roma­nia, Bul­gar­ia, all non-EU/EWR states
Kiel/ Han­nover	Den­mark, Nor­way, Swe­den, Fin­land, Ice­land, Esto­nia, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Croa­t­ia, Hun­gary, Slo­vak Repub­lic, Czech Republic
Nürnberg/ Stuttgart	Bel­gium, France, Lux­em­bourg, Spain, Por­tu­gal, Italy, Greece, Aus­tria, Liecht­en­stein, Slove­nia, Cyprus

Scope of Review

When a com­pa­ny is estab­lished, the employ­ment agen­cies pri­mar­i­ly review the per­son­al reli­a­bil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny own­er. Per­mis­sion is denied if cer­tain facts exist that give rea­son to believe the appli­cant will not com­ply with legal reg­u­la­tions. Such facts are list­ed by way of exam­ple in the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 3(1) of the Tem­po­rary Employ­ment Act (AÜG):

• Non-com­pli­ance with the statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions of social secu­ri­ty law,
• Non-com­pli­ance with the pro­vi­sions of SGB III regard­ing employ­ment place­ment and the employ­ment of for­eign nation­als (Sec­tion 284 et seq. SGB III),
• Non-com­pli­ance with occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty reg­u­la­tions,
• Non-com­pli­ance with oblig­a­tions under labor law.

Issues

Where do prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties fre­quent­ly arise when apply­ing for a labour leas­ing license?

It must be said that dif­fi­cul­ties are often “self-inflict­ed.” The required doc­u­ments can usu­al­ly be pro­vid­ed with­out issue in stan­dard cas­es; in spe­cial cas­es, solu­tions can be found, often with the involve­ment of the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency. In par­tic­u­lar, if cer­tain doc­u­ments can­not be sub­mit­ted through no fault of the appli­cant, the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency often grants a license sub­ject to revo­ca­tion and sets a grace peri­od with­in which the doc­u­ments can be sub­mit­ted. This is the case, for exam­ple, when for­eign appli­cants can­not pro­vide crim­i­nal records because the author­i­ties in their home coun­tries do not issue them in a time­ly manner.

Other common difficulties include:

• Lack of exper­tise on the part of appli­cants: In such cas­es, the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency reg­u­lar­ly requires proof of train­ing in tem­po­rary employ­ment law, which may last sev­er­al days. This may seem bur­den­some, but it is also clear that with­out in-depth prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of the AÜG prop­er appli­ca­tion of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments can­not be guar­an­teed; at the lat­est after the first audit, the license would be revoked any­way. This makes per­fect sense; the sub­ject mat­ter is complex.
• Lack of finan­cial capac­i­ty / tax and social secu­ri­ty con­tri­bu­tion debts: The Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency usu­al­ly takes a hard line on this; how­ev­er, if there have been pay­ment arrears in the past, it is gen­er­al­ly suf­fi­cient to set­tle them in the first instance; then, as a rule, noth­ing stands in the way of grant­i­ng the license.
• Crim­i­nal records or unre­li­a­bil­i­ty under com­mer­cial law: These fac­tors also often pose a last­ing obsta­cle to the grant­i­ng of a license. How­ev­er, a prog­no­sis must be made here as well. One-time vio­la­tions gen­er­al­ly do not jus­ti­fy a denial.
• This also applies if the tem­po­rary staffing license has already been revoked in the past or, for exam­ple, if the cur­rent man­ag­ing director’s license was revoked in con­nec­tion with anoth­er com­pa­ny. Once is nev­er, but it shouldn’t hap­pen more often than that. And, of course, it always depends on the exact circumstances.

Licensing Requirement

When does staffing require a license?

Labour leas­ing occurs when an employ­ee works under the direc­tion of the client (usu­al­ly on the client’s premis­es). Work per­formed under con­tracts for work or ser­vice, on the oth­er hand, does not require a license. While con­tracts for work, unlike labour leas­ing, require a deliv­er­able result (e.g., per­form­ing a repair or pro­duc­ing goods), the dis­tinc­tion between an inde­pen­dent ser­vice con­tract (e.g., IT ser­vices) and labour leas­ing is less clear-cut. The dif­fer­ence here lies sole­ly in the oblig­a­tion to fol­low instruc­tions in the case of labour leas­ing agency work ver­sus the free­dom from such instruc­tions by the self-employed con­trac­tor. Par­tic­u­lar cau­tion is war­rant­ed here when indi­vid­u­als work on the client’s premis­es under inde­pen­dent ser­vice con­tracts; in such cas­es, there is often mere­ly a sham ser­vice con­tract = labour leas­ing work.

Temporary Employment Without a License

Tem­po­rary employ­ment does not require a license in the fol­low­ing cas­es (Sec­tion 1(3) AÜG):

• Sec­ond­ments to a con­sor­tium formed for the pro­duc­tion of a work;
• Assign­ments with­in the same indus­try to avoid short-time work or lay­offs due to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment provisions;
• Intra-group tem­po­rary staffing, pro­vid­ed the employ­ee is not hired and employed for the pur­pose of such staffing;
• Occa­sion­al tem­po­rary staffing between employ­ers, pro­vid­ed the employ­ee is not hired and employed for the pur­pose of such staffing.
• the pro­vi­sion of per­son­nel based on a col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment in the pub­lic sec­tor (e.g., Sec­tion 4(3) TVöD);
• the assign­ment of per­son­nel between legal enti­ties under pub­lic law, pro­vid­ed that col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments in the pub­lic sec­tor per­mit this;
• where an employ­er with few­er than 50 employ­ees, in order to avoid short-time work or lay­offs, makes employ­ees — who are not hired and employed for the pur­pose of assign­ment — avail­able to a third par­ty for a peri­od of up to 12 months.

Prohibitions

Pro­hi­bi­tion of labour leas­ing in the con­struc­tion industry

Labour leas­ing in con­struc­tion com­pa­nies for work typ­i­cal­ly per­formed by man­u­al labor­ers is gen­er­al­ly pro­hib­it­ed. Pur­suant to Sec­tion 1b of the Tem­po­rary Employ­ment Act (AÜG), it is per­mit­ted only

• between con­struc­tion com­pa­nies and oth­er com­pa­nies, if col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments cov­er­ing these com­pa­nies and declared gen­er­al­ly bind­ing so provide,
• between con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, if the sup­ply­ing com­pa­ny has demon­stra­bly been cov­ered by the same frame­work and social secu­ri­ty col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments or by their gen­er­al applic­a­bil­i­ty for at least three years.

Costs

The Spe­cial Fee Reg­u­la­tion of the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS­BGe­bV) has been in effect since Octo­ber 1, 2021. Accord­ing to this fee sched­ule, the exam­i­na­tion costs are to cor­re­spond to the expens­es incurred by the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency for the exam­i­na­tion. Whether this is tru­ly rea­son­able is ques­tion­able, as tax offices and social insur­ance agen­cies do not have the com­pa­nies they audit pay for their exam­i­na­tion tasks either.

In any case, details of the reg­u­la­tion to be observed in prac­tice are con­tained in the annex to Sec­tion 2(1) of the BMASBGebV.

The fee payable to the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency for the renew­al of a license is gen­er­al­ly €2,060 or €1,316 (with an excep­tion for a lim­it­ed, less exten­sive audit), and €2,060 for the issuance of a per­ma­nent license.

Shelf Company

In some cas­es, shelf com­pa­nies with a tem­po­rary employ­ment licence are offered on the mar­ket. How­ev­er, the North Rhine-West­phalia Region­al Social Court has ruled that the for­ma­tion and pur­chase of shelf com­pa­nies with a tem­po­rary employ­ment licence are unlaw­ful (judge­ment of 4 July 2024 – L 9 AL 169/22). Such an approach there­fore car­ries con­sid­er­able risks, mean­ing that there is cur­rent­ly no alter­na­tive to sub­mit­ting your own appli­ca­tion to the Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency.

Helpful Links

Eng­lish lan­guage ver­sion of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Employ­ment Agency (Bun­de­sagen­tur für Arbeit).

Please find also more detailed infor­ma­tion at “temp work in ger­many”; in the con­struc­tion sec­tor also our web­site soka-recht­san­walt might be helpful.