Harassment at work: what Law 42(I)/2025 asks of an employer

Most Cyprus employers still treat harassment at work as an HR problem with a legal tail. Since 11 April 2025 that is the wrong way round. The Prevention and Combating of Violence and Harassment at the Workplace Law of 2025, Law 42(I)/2025, was published in the Official Gazette that day and came into force on publication. It creates criminal offences, reverses the burden of proof in civil proceedings, orders reinstatement without regard to the employer's good faith, and makes an employer who has not written a code of conduct jointly liable for what somebody else did.

Section 3(1) states the method plainly: prevention and combating of violence and harassment at the workplace through the civil law, the criminal law, or both, together with out-of-court procedures.

Two definitions, and both turn on effect

Section 2 defines harassment as conduct at the workplace that is unwanted by the person receiving it and that has the purpose or the effect of offending or violating a person's dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.

Violence is defined more widely still: an act, omission, practice or conduct, including threats, whose purpose or effect, or in consequence of which there may be caused to the victim, physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm, carried out at the workplace, whether once or repeatedly. A proviso adds that violence for these purposes includes offences under the Criminal Code and under the Law on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

Neither definition requires intention. Both are satisfied by effect. That single point is what makes the older "he did not mean it that way" answer useless.

The workplace is not the office

Section 2 defines the workplace as the place where the work is carried out, or a place connected with it or arising from it, and then names six things it includes:

• the public and private space surrounding the workplace;
• the place where the employee is paid, rests, takes a break or eats, or uses sanitary, washing or changing facilities;
• the place where tours or travel occur, or where professional training, events or work-related social activities take place;
• work-related communication, including communication activated by information and communication technologies;
• accommodation provided by the employer;
• travel to and from work.

A message on a work channel at eleven at night is at the workplace. So is the company dinner, the training course, and the car.

What the employer must do

Section 6(1) requires the employer to protect employees from any act of any person at the workplace constituting violence or harassment, and from acts or conduct that follow the making of a complaint, or the rejection of such acts.

Section 6(2) requires preventive measures and a written policy, drawn up and implemented in consultation with the employees and the organisations representing them.

Section 6(3) requires the employer, as soon as an incident or its consequences come to their knowledge, to take every appropriate measure to stop it, prevent its repetition, remove its consequences for the person affected and avoid their re-victimisation. A proviso says those measures may include a compliance instruction, or a change of post, hours, place or manner of work where that can be provided.

Sections 6(4) and 6(5) require every complaint to be received, investigated and managed with zero tolerance, impartially, confidentially, protecting the personal data of both the complainant and the person complained of, and through mechanisms that are safe, fair and effective.

The provision that moves liability

Section 6(6) requires the employer to take timely appropriate measures to prevent those acts, and its two provisos decide who pays when prevention fails.

The first: an employer is treated as having taken such a measure where they draw up a code of conduct under section 6(7) and take sufficient practical measures to apply what it sets out.

The second: where an employer does not draw up a code of conduct and the acts are committed, the employer is jointly and severally liable with the person who committed them.

That is the whole compliance case in one sentence. A code of conduct is not a document that improves the employer's position at trial. Its absence makes the employer a co-defendant.

Section 6(7) requires the code to be drawn up after consultation with employee representatives, in a way employees can understand, with training on its provisions. Section 6(8) sets the minimum content: the scope; the identification of the punishable acts of violence and harassment, of unwanted conduct and of related conduct; a description of the conduct making up the objective and subjective elements of those acts; provision for complaints and the bodies or authorities they may be made to; the respective obligations of employers and employees; and the measures and procedure for dealing with such conduct.

The criminal side

Section 9(1): a person who engages in conduct constituting or causing violence to another person at their workplace, knowing or having been obliged to know that the conduct constitutes violence, is guilty of an offence punishable by imprisonment of up to three years or a fine of up to €10,000, or both, provided the act is not more severely punished under another law in force. Section 10(1) does the same for harassment, on the same penalties.

Sections 9(2) and 10(2) supply the test for "ought to have known": a person is treated as having been obliged to know if a reasonable person in the same circumstances would have considered that the conduct causes or constitutes violence or harassment.

Section 11 reaches the reaction to a complaint. A person who obstructs or attempts to obstruct the making of a complaint about a section 9 or section 10 offence, or who takes harmful or retaliatory action under section 7, is guilty of an offence punishable by up to two years or a fine of up to €5,000, or both.

Section 12 reaches the company. A legal person is liable for an offence under the Law committed by a person acting individually or as a member of one of its organs who holds a position based on a power of representation, of decision-making, or of exercising control within it. Section 12(2) extends that to an offence made possible by that person's deficient supervision or control. Section 12(3) preserves the prosecution of the individual, and section 12(4) sets a fine of up to €20,000 for the legal person.

Section 23 balances it: a person who knowingly makes a false complaint of violence or harassment at work commits an offence carrying up to three years or a fine of up to €10,000, or both.

Dismissal, and the reversal of the burden

Section 7(1) makes absolutely void the dismissal, and any harmful change in the conditions of employment, of an employee who complained or protested about an offence under the Law, or who rejected or reported violence or harassment, unless the employer proves that it was for a reason unrelated to the complaint, the protest or the rejection.

Section 7(2) applies that whoever the complaint was made to, national or international, professional or not, and however it was made, including proceedings before a court. Section 7(3) extends the same protection to any person who assisted the employee in making or supporting the complaint, including by giving evidence in or out of court.

Section 21(1) allows a person who considers themselves affected to claim before the competent court even if the relationship in which the breach is alleged has ended. Section 21(2) then reverses the burden in every proceeding other than a criminal one: where the party alleging the breach establishes facts from which the breach may be presumed, the Court obliges the other party to prove that no breach occurred.

Section 21(4) protects that machinery from being drafted away: the rights and remedies in the Law cannot be removed or restricted by agreement, policy, form or term of employment, including an agreement to arbitrate made before the dispute arose.

Which court, and what it will order

Section 21(3) makes violence or harassment at work a labour dispute, and section 24(1) gives the Labour Disputes Court jurisdiction over the labour and other private-law disputes arising from the Law, subject to the Administrative Court's exclusive jurisdiction under Article 146 of the Constitution and to the criminal jurisdiction of the courts trying an offence.

Section 24(4) is the remedy that changes how these cases are advised. On a dismissal in breach of the Law, the Labour Disputes Court, in addition to compensation and without examining the good or bad faith of the employer, orders reinstatement and obliges the employer to accept the employee's services, where the employee has asked for that remedy. A proviso deals with the arithmetic: on reinstatement the employee awarded compensation is not entitled to back pay, but the period of the dismissal counts as service for all other purposes.

Section 24(5) allows the Court, where it considers it necessary, to make a binding declaration of the applicant's rights in relation to the breach. Section 24(6) applies the section 21(2) reversal of the burden in the Labour Disputes Court, without affecting section 6(1) of the Termination of Employment Law, Law 24/1967, which continues to apply to a dismissal in breach.

The out-of-court route

Section 13(1) gives a person who considers themselves affected the right to protection from the Chief Inspector and the Inspectors and to complain to them, even if the employment relationship in which the violence or harassment is alleged has ended. Section 13(2) allows a complaint to the Commissioner for Administration where that office has jurisdiction, with the data protection safeguards the proviso sets out.

What to do about it

If you are an employer, the question is not whether an incident has arisen. It is whether you have a code of conduct drawn up after consultation and covering the six matters in section 6(8), a written policy under section 6(2), and a complaints mechanism that is safe, fair and effective under section 6(5). If you have none of those, section 6(6) has already decided who is liable when something happens.

If you have been harassed at work, or dismissed after complaining, the position is better than it was in three specific ways: the definition turns on effect rather than intention, the burden shifts to the employer once you establish facts from which a breach may be presumed, and reinstatement is available without any inquiry into the employer's good faith. The file that makes those work is the contemporaneous one: dates, messages, who was told and when, and what changed afterwards.

Questions we are asked

Sources

• Prevention and Combating of Violence and Harassment at the Workplace Law of 2025, 42(I)/2025, Official Gazette No. 5033, 11 April 2025
• Termination of Employment Law of 1967, 24/1967, consolidated text

This article is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

Klitos Platis

Advocate, Partner

Kleanthous & Platis LLC, Nicosia · Published 24 August 2026

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