I'm from Denmark (which, admittedly, I understand is on the lax side of things as far as Europe goes), but I can't see what would stop you. If you want to close your company or office for strategic purposes, you just say so and fire the people as per the terms of their contract, which'll mean three months notice in most cases. Same with cutbacks, you can just do it. You can't fire someone without notice or for no reason, but "we don't need this work to be done here anymore" is of course a perfectly valid reason. At least that's my impression.
> fire the people as per the terms of their contract
That's not possible in much of Europe. For example, in Ireland, you can't fire someone without cause, regardless of notice period. If the position is being made redundant (and you can prove it, which in this case, where you're moving the role to a different country would be easy to do), then you can let them go, but you have to pay them a statutory severance payment (as well as anything else specified in their contract).
EDIT: There might also be a language barrier going on with the terminology here: when I read the word "fire" in this case, I generally take it to mean "to be dismissed from the role for cause".
I don't really think you're contradicting me? If you, as a company, want to get rid of a group of staff because you think you're spending too much money on wages, you phrase that in a more palatable way, probably involving the word "strategic", and you give them what they're owed according to their contract. That sounds very straight-forward to me.
The thing that's possible in America and arguably not possible in Europe is to just show someone the door on the spot. And sure, it's easy on companies if they're able to just put a post-it on the door one morning that tells your now former employees they can go home because you don't want to pay them anymore. But I don't think what you're describing can reasonably be termed "not possible".
EDIT - Point taken about the terminology. I'm talking about any sort of "you won't be working here anymore" situation.
> The thing that's possible in America and arguably not possible in Europe is to just show someone the door on the spot.
Spaniard here. It's possible, it's just more expensive: the employer has to pay them the salary for the next 15 days --so it's like: "you will be fired in 15 days, but you must go home now"-- and the mandatory compensation for the years worked (33 days per year worked, up to 2 years compensation).
"The thing that's possible in America and arguably not possible in Europe is to just show someone the door on the spot."
It's only sort of possible in America. If you are laying people off (for economic reasons, not cause) then federal law requires 60 days notice. This is enforced civilly however, so if a company is going bankrupt they may ignore it because there will be no one left to sue.
An employee laid off that way will be eligible for unemployment benefits, which is a form of insurance payout, not public assistance. What we don't require is severance. Most companies that are not going away will do something like 1-2 weeks severance pay per year of service because they want people to not sabotage anything on the way out and for new employees to continue to be willing to work for them, but it's legal to just pay people for time worked and give them the boot.
See my edit, I think this is just a confusion of terminology. I wouldn't really refer to someone whose position being made redundant as "getting fired", there's very different procedures to be followed and it has very different implications.
>I'm from Denmark (which, admittedly, I understand is on the lax side of things as far as Europe goes), but I can't see what would stop you.
Same in Austria, which has a very un-European business-friendly approach to terminations. You can fire anyone anytime without a reason, unless your company is big enough and has a unionized worker's council willing to stand up to terminations and ask for precise reasons (usually factory style jobs).
But no SW companies usually do, so you can get terminated on the spot for no reason, with you taking your notice period as garden leave without the employer having to pay you with severance or any other compensation. It's pretty similar to the US in this regard.
Well for one, you'd have to actually pay the employees in Denmark per the contract. They can't just not pay. If they don't pay they'll be declared bankrupt by the workers income insurance(lønmodtagernes garantifond) and the owners will be last in line to get anything. As a counter example see Twitter where employees still haven't received their three month severance.
Yeah, it's the same in Norway. You need justification to fire an individual employee, but it's not hard to close down your entire business, do cutbacks etc. for business reasons. It doesn't seem unlikely that it's much harder to do this in southern europe though.
