Netherlands sick pay rules 2026: 104 weeks at 70%

Article 7:629(1) BW is the whole obligation in one sentence. Where an employee has not performed the agreed work because they were prevented by incapacity arising from illness, pregnancy or childbirth, they keep the right to 70% of the wage determined by reference to time, for a period of 104 weeks. The money comes from the employer. There is no state scheme that steps in and picks it up during those two years.

That is a minimum, not a ceiling on generosity. Contracts and CAOs commonly top the statutory 70% up, and the top-up is a negotiating point rather than a legal requirement, so the figure in an offer letter and the figure in the statute are often different numbers. Where a generally binding CAO applies to the role, the top-up may not be optional at all.

Two categories get six weeks instead of 104 under article 7:629(2) BW: domestic workers who work fewer than four days a week for a private household, and employees who have reached AOW age. Everybody else is on the full two-year duty from the first day of employment, with no qualifying period and no waiting week in the statute.

Payment is reduced rather than duplicated. Under article 7:629(5) BW the wage is reduced by any statutory benefit or insurance payment the employee receives for the incapacity, and by income earned elsewhere during the time they could have worked. What the employee actually receives is therefore the statutory percentage net of those, not the percentage on top of them.

A statutory reintegration programme runs alongside the pay duty, with dated milestones from week six onwards, and it is set out in our guide to the Wet verbetering poortwachter. This post deals with the money.

For the first 52 weeks the employee must receive at least the applicable statutory minimum wage, whatever 70% of their own wage comes to. Article 7:629(1) BW says so in the same sentence that sets the percentage. For a lower-paid employee that floor, rather than the percentage, is what determines the payslip in year one.

Working out the floor means working in hours, because that is how the Dutch minimum wage is written. The Dutch minimum wage is set per hour and there is no statutory monthly figure an employer owes: the minimumuurloon for workers aged 21 and over is € 14,71 an hour from 1 January 2026 and € 14,99 an hour from 1 July 2026, reset every 1 January and 1 July under article 14 WML and published by Rijksoverheid. A 36-hour and a 40-hour employee therefore have different lawful minimums for the same job, which is covered in our guide to the Dutch minimum wage in 2026.

Then the floor disappears. The wording of article 7:629(1) BW limits it to the first 52 weeks, so from week 53 the entitlement is 70% of wage and nothing more. For an employee earning at or near the minimum, 70% in the second year is a figure below the minimum wage, lawfully.

That step is the point in a long absence where the employee’s position changes sharply, and it arrives roughly a year before the pay duty ends. It is one reason CAO top-ups are so common in the Netherlands, and one reason employees on long-term sick leave ask what their contract says at about month eleven.

The statutory duty reaches only as far as the maximum dagloon. Article 7:629(1) BW covers the wage insofar as it does not exceed the maximum daily wage under article 17(1) Wfsv, which for 2026 is € 305,41 a day, or € 79.409 a year. Wage above that ceiling is outside the statutory obligation.

So on a salary above the ceiling, the statutory sum is 70% of the capped wage rather than 70% of the salary. On a salary of € 48.000 the cap changes nothing, because the whole salary sits below it. On a salary of € 120.000 it changes a great deal, and the gap between the statutory figure and the employee’s normal net pay is the part that gets negotiated into the contract.

That same € 79.409 ceiling is the maximum premieloon for employee insurance contributions and the werkgeversheffing Zvw in 2026, which is why it turns up in two different conversations about the same employee. Our guide to Dutch payroll sets out where it bites on the contribution side.

Anything an employer pays above the capped 70% is contractual. It may come from the arbeidsovereenkomst, from a CAO, or from a policy the employer has chosen to run, and it should be written down, because an employee reading only the statute will calculate a smaller number than the one the employer intends to pay.

For budgeting, the useful way to hold the three numbers together is in order: take the wage, cut it at the ceiling, take 70% of what is left, then check the result against the minimum wage for the hours in the contract while the employee is still inside the first 52 weeks. Whichever of the floor and the percentage is higher is what the statute requires that week. The employer is paying that, and carrying the role, for as long as the absence runs.

Article 7:629(3) BW sets out the grounds, and they divide into two kinds. There is no entitlement at all where the incapacity was caused intentionally by the employee, or where it arises from a defect about which the employee gave false information at a pre-employment medical examination. Those remove the right rather than pause it.

The rest suspend payment for the period during which the employee does one of the following:

• Obstructs or delays their own recovery
• Refuses passende arbeid, suitable work, without proper grounds
• Refuses to cooperate with reasonable instructions or measures aimed at enabling suitable work
• Refuses to cooperate in drawing up, evaluating or adjusting the plan van aanpak
• Files their WIA claim late

The distinction matters in practice. A suspension bites only for the period the conduct lasts, so an employee who starts cooperating again is back on pay from that point, and the employer does not get to treat one refusal as ending the two-year duty. Establishing that one of these grounds applies usually means going through the bedrijfsarts rather than taking a view in the office, because the question is a medical one.

Refusing passende arbeid is the ground most often reached for and the one most often reached for too early. Suitable work is assessed against what the employee can still do, which is a moving picture across a long absence, and the answer in month two is not the answer in month nine.

Article 7:629(7) BW is the procedural rule that decides most Dutch sick pay disputes, and it is short. An employer loses the right to rely on any of the grounds in paragraph 3 if it does not notify the employee immediately after the suspicion of that ground arises, or after it could reasonably have arisen.

The consequence is unforgiving. An employer that quietly stops paying, or that pays for another six weeks and then raises the refusal at the end of the month, has a ground it can no longer use. The obligation to keep paying revives, and the argument about whether the employee was in fact obstructing recovery never gets heard.

What that means operationally is a written notification, sent at once, saying which ground is relied on and from what date payment is affected. It is also why a Dutch sick file is a dated file: the bedrijfsarts reports, the plan van aanpak, the notes of each voortgangsgesprek and the correspondence all carry dates that either support an immediate notification or show that it was not immediate.

The same file is read again later if the relationship ends. Where an employer asks the kantonrechter to dissolve a contract because the employee has breached their reintegration duties, article 7:671b(5) BW requires the employer to have given a written warning or suspended pay first, and to hold a deskundigenverklaring. An employer that never invoked article 7:629(3) at the time has nothing to show for the months it is complaining about.

The pay duty is expensive because of what sits beside it. Article 7:670(1) BW prohibits the employer from giving notice for as long as the employee is unfit to work through illness, unless the incapacity has already lasted at least two years, six weeks for an employee at AOW age, or unless it began after UWV received the request for permission. Two years of pay and two years of not being able to end the contract are the same two years.

The counting rules close the obvious gaps. Separate periods of incapacity are added together where they are separated by less than four weeks, so a pattern of short absences does not reset the clock. Periods of pregnancy-related incapacity before zwangerschapsverlof, and incapacity during zwangerschapsverlof or bevallingsverlof, are excluded from the two-year count instead.

The prohibition also constrains the routes out. UWV cannot grant permission while an opzegverbod applies, unless it may reasonably be expected to lapse within four weeks of the decision. The kantonrechter may still dissolve where the request is unconnected to the circumstances the prohibition addresses, and the illness prohibition does not apply where the illness began after the court received the dissolution request. That last point is the narrow escape route, and it closes the moment the employee reports sick. How the routes work in general is covered in our guide to terminating employment in the Netherlands.

This is the liability that makes foreign buyers look hard at who the employer on the contract is. Where a hire is made through an Employer of Record Netherlands arrangement, the EOR becomes the legal employer of the person you hire, and the article 7:629 BW pay duty, the reintegration process and the opzegverbod sit with the employer named on the arbeidsovereenkomst. Your business keeps the work and decides what the role is.