Registering a foreign worker for social insurance in North Macedonia

A foreign worker enters compulsory social insurance through two separate filings. The employer submits electronic form M1 or M2 through the system of the Employment Agency, then files form ZO-1 with the local office of the Health Insurance Fund. The second filing is due within eight days of the employment relationship starting.

Without the personal number there is no filing

The sequence collapses if the personal identification number is missing. The Ministry of Interior generates it for a foreign national and prints it on the biometric residence card. Every insurance form uses that number as the identifier, so until the card has been collected neither M1 or M2 nor ZO-1 can be submitted. Employers who set the first working day for the day the worker lands find they have nothing to register him with.

Form M1 or M2 is the registration and deregistration into compulsory social insurance and covers all three branches at once: pension and disability insurance, health insurance, and unemployment insurance. It is completed electronically and printed from the Employment Agency system under the Law on Records in the Field of Labour, Official Gazette 16/2004. The same form is used when the employment ends, which is how the employer deregisters the worker.

Health insurance is filed separately, at the local office of the Health Insurance Fund of North Macedonia. In its guidance on acquiring the status of an insured person, the Fund sets a deadline of eight days from the day the employment relationship begins. The form is ZO-1 and the Fund publishes a separate instruction for completing it. That filing establishes the status of insured person, and entitlement to health care runs from that point.

The two forms side by side

Alongside these two, the employer files a start of work notice at the employment centre where the company is registered. That duty comes from the Law on Employment and Work of Foreigners, consolidated text in Official Gazette 217/2015 and 163/2021 as published by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, and it carries the heaviest consequence if it is skipped. The detail sits in registering the start of work.

What happens when one filing is missed

If the start of work notice is not filed, the law treats the employment relationship as never having been established, and the Employment Agency informs the Ministry of Interior. That is not a clerical remark. The Interior Ministry holds the temporary residence decision, and employment is the ground on which that residence rests, so a missed notice undercuts the document the worker's stay depends on.

If ZO-1 slips past the eight day deadline, the worker holds no insured status for that period. Any visit to a doctor in those days is paid privately, and the cost usually lands back with the employer. This shows up most often with group arrivals, where twenty workers land on the same day, residence cards come out in batches and one local office receives twenty files at once.

The working rule is to count forwards from the date on the biometric card rather than from the date the contract was signed. Card and personal number first, then M1 or M2 with the start of work notice, then ZO-1 inside eight days. The inspection consequences of a missed step are set out in labour inspection and fines, and the permit underneath all of it is covered in the work and residence permit procedure.

The insurance file is the last part of the hiring procedure, which is exactly why it often ends up without an owner inside the company. When one person in HR runs all three forms off the same checklist, the deadlines hold. The checklist that works starts from the date on the card and has three lines: M1 or M2, the start of work notice, and ZO-1 within eight days.