Ilse van Aert

The Unemployment Insurance Act (in Dutch: Werkloosheidswet) stipulates that if a fixed-term employment contract is terminated by mutual consent, without an interim termination clause, the employee is not entitled to unemployment benefit. However, the District Court of Amsterdam recently ruled that an interim termination clause may still be included in a settlement agreement that is terminating the employment contract. This allows the employee to retain his entitlement to unemployment benefit.

On 28 September 2021, the Dutch Senate has passed the legislative proposal on a more balanced male to female ratio on management and supervisory boards, which is expected to enter into force on 1 January 2022. The legislative proposal contains a diversity quota for supervisory boards of listed companies and a target scheme for large companies. In this blog, we will discuss the measures that the legislative proposal introduces.

For both the employee and the employer, a notice period applies when terminating an employment contract. It is important that this term is observed. If the party giving notice does not do so, he owes the other party damages equal to the wages over the period the employment contract would have continued if the correct notice period had been applied. In this blog we will discuss the possible notice periods and the consequences of not (correctly) applying them.

On 1 July 2021, the Act on Management and Supervision of Legal Entities (in Dutch: Wet bestuur en toezicht rechtspersonen) entered into force. The Act, which previously only applied to private and public limited companies (in Dutch: bv and nv), now also applies to all other legal entities. One of the consequences of this is that the so-called preventive dismissal test for directors of foundations has been lapsed.

The District Court of Amsterdam has ruled that Uber drivers are not self-employed workers, but employees. There is a "modern employment relationship" between the Uber drivers and Uber. In addition, the Dutch Collective Labour Agreement (hereafter: CLA) for Taxi Transport was declared applicable to the employment relationship.