New in Germany: Your Employer Must Now Tell You About Free Legal Help

If you've moved to Germany for a job, there's a decent chance nobody has ever told you where to go if that job goes wrong — if your employer stops paying overtime, hands you a termination letter you don't understand, or quietly changes the terms you agreed to before you left home. A free, government-backed advice service for exactly this situation has existed for years. Most people recruited from abroad have simply never heard of it. As of 1 January 2026, that's now the employer's problem to fix.

What actually changed

Two new provisions, §45b and §45c of the Residence Act (AufenthG), took effect this year. §45b formalizes a nationwide counseling offer for third-country nationals on labor and social law questions. §45c is the part that changes your experience directly: it puts a legal duty on the employer.

If a company based in Germany signs an employment contract with someone recruited from abroad — someone still living outside Germany when the contract is signed, coming specifically for that job — the employer must, in writing, no later than your first day of work, tell you that free counseling exists and give you the contact details of the advice center nearest your workplace (§45c AufenthG). Employers can meet this by handing over a standard information sheet; the law doesn't require anything more elaborate than making sure you actually know the service exists before you start.

It's a small administrative step, but it closes a real gap: recruitment happens fast, contracts get signed under pressure, and the people most likely to need this kind of help — new arrivals, dependent on their employer for both a paycheck and, often, their visa — were also the least likely to know it was there.

What the counseling itself covers

The service you're being pointed to is called Faire Integration, and it isn't new — it's been running in some form since 2015. What's new is that employers now have to mention it. The counseling is free, confidential, and covers the situations that actually come up: wages and unpaid overtime, working hours, vacation entitlement, terminations and notice periods, health insurance obligations, and pension contributions (BMAS).

Each of Germany's 16 states has at least one counseling center, and advice is given in your native language wherever the center can manage it — the network covers more than 15 languages between centers, including Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, and Dari. You don't need to already suspect something is wrong to use it. A first contract review, before you sign anything, is exactly the kind of question the centers are built for.

Who this covers — and who it doesn't

The notification duty is narrow on purpose. It applies when all three of these are true:

• You're a third-country national — not an EU/EEA or Swiss citizen, who wouldn't need a work visa in the first place.
• You were recruited from abroad: still living outside Germany when your German employer signed your contract.
• Your work start date is on or after 1 January 2026.

If you were already working in Germany before the new year, or if a company hired you after you'd already moved (say, you arrived on a Chancenkarte job-seeker visa and found work locally), your employer has no legal duty to mention Faire Integration to you. That's a gap worth knowing about, because it means plenty of people already in the country on exactly the kind of visa this is meant to protect — a Blue Card holder, someone on a recognition partnership — will never get the notification at all, even though the counseling service is open to them regardless.

Employers also don't have to comply for placements arranged through certain cross-border programs under §299 SGB III, and fines for skipping the duty entirely can run up to €30,000 per employee (Gesetze im Internet) — a real incentive for companies to take it seriously, at least for the hires the law actually covers.

If nobody told you

None of this changes what you're entitled to. The counseling was free and open to third-country nationals long before §45c existed, and it stays open whether or not your employer ever mentions it. If your start date was before 2026, if you were hired after already living here, or if your employer simply skipped the paperwork, you can still find your nearest center directly at faire-integration.de, filter by state and language, and book an appointment yourself.

It's worth bookmarking the moment you sign a German contract, not the moment something feels wrong. A five-minute look at your contract before you start is a much easier conversation than trying to untangle a dispute six months in — and it costs nothing either way.

Related on Ankommo

• Germany's Recognition Partnership Visa: Work First, Get Your Qualification Recognized Later
• EU Blue Card Germany 2026: Salary Thresholds & the Fast Track to PR
• Working in Germany guide

Figures verified against the official sources below as of July 2026. Employment law details can vary by individual circumstance — always confirm with the linked official sources or a qualified advisor before acting.