From employee to entrepreneur

If you start working as an entrepreneur, we recommend you to join an unemployment fund for entrepreneurs right away, because you can only accumulate employment history as an entrepreneur while you are a member of  an unemployment fund for entrepreneurs. If you work as an entrepreneur for more than 18 months, we cannot grant you earnings-related daily allowance before you have fulfilled the employee’s working condition again after you start working as an entrepreneur.

When you move from YTK to an unemployment fund for entrepreneurs, your unemployment security will be protected by an 18-month period of post-protection. During the post-protection period, a person who has gone from employee to entrepreneur, and become unemployed, may be entitled to unemployment allowance based on the salaried employment they had before becoming an entrepreneur.

So, if you become unemployed after moving to an unemployment fund for entrepreneurs before you have fulfilled the working condition for entrepreneurs, you will still be entitled to earnings-related daily allowance based on the income from salaried employment you had before you became an entrepreneur. In order to qualify for this, you must have joined an unemployment fund for entrepreneurs within one month after resigning from YTK.

When you work through an invoicing company, you can take out a pension insurance for self-employed persons. When the insured income is high enough (14 088 €), you can join an unemployment fund for entrepreneurs and accumulate employment history in order to fulfil the working condition there.