Employment
Labour Law 12/2003, with a new 2025 code replacing it
Law 12/2003 governed individual and collective employment for two decades. A new Labour Law was enacted in 2025, restructuring dismissal, dispute resolution and leave, and creating specialised labour courts.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — National. Enforcement by the Ministry of Labour; the 2025 code introduces dedicated labour courts in place of the previous committee route.
- Deadline — Probation is capped at three months under the 2003 code
- Deadline — Fixed-term contracts renewed beyond statutory limits convert to indefinite
Governing law
- Labour Law 12/2003
- Labour Law 14/2025 — the replacement code
- Social Insurance and Pensions Law 148/2019
- Trade Union Law 213/2017
In practice
The most consequential feature of Egyptian dismissal law is that an employer generally cannot lawfully terminate an indefinite contract for misconduct on its own authority — it must obtain a determination, and the 2003 code routed that through a committee while the 2025 code moves it to specialised courts. Advice that assumes at-will termination is simply wrong. Social insurance registration under Law 148/2019 is mandatory and is the practical trigger for most compliance exposure, because unregistered employment is detected through the insurance system. Trade union pluralism was formally permitted by Law 213/2017 after a long period of single-federation monopoly, though registration requirements remain demanding.