Fraudulent Practices In Contracts For Student Interns: "Fake Interns"

The hiring of student interns by companies using the formulation "internship agreement" signed with schools or universities has increased significantly in recent years.

This type of agreement is very attractive for the company, since labour law is not applicable to the student interns (there is no mandatory minimum wage, or severance pay, etc.), and, in addition, the Social Security contribution cost for said company is limited to a fixed amount of 48.41 Euros per month for each student intern (much lower than the cost of approximately 33% of the salary of the employee applicable in the employment contract).

However, many companies improperly use this intern formulation as a basis for an “internship agreement” in order to avoid signing employment contracts subject to labour regulations, and, therefore, they benefit from the advantages detailed in the previous paragraph.