Christophi & Associates :: Advocates & Legal Consultants

Reasons for Dismissal

The termination of a contract of employment in Cyprus is governed by the Termination of Employment Law (Law 24/67 as amended).

Under the Law any termination of employment is considered as unfair unless the reason for the termination falls within one of the accepted reasons for dismissal as outlined in section 5. This means that the employer has the burden of proof of proving that he dismissed the employee for a reason mentioned in section 5.

According to section 5 of the Law the justified reasons of dismissal are:

When the employee does not perform his duties in a reasonable manner, excluding the cases where the inability to perform the duties reasonably is attributed to illness, accident or because of pregnancy.
When the employee becomes redundant.
When the dismissal is attributed to reasons like war, coup, destructions and generally reasons that are not the employer's fault.
When the contract of employment is a fixed term one and it expires or when the employee reaches retirement age.
When the employee behaves in such a way that the employer is justified to dismiss him without notice.

The last point above states that there may be instances where an employer may dismiss an employee without notice if the latter behaves in a particular way. The instances that this can take place are:

the behaviour of the employee is such that it shows that the relationship between employer and employee can not continue, for example the employee has lied to the employer.
the commission of a serious offence by the employee in the execution of his duties.
the commission of a criminal offence.
inappropriate behaviour like cursing.
serious and repeated violation of the rules and regulations regarding employment.