Terminating employment in the Netherlands: permission first

Article 7:669(1) BW allows an employer to terminate an indefinite arbeidsovereenkomst only where two conditions are met together. There has to be a redelijke grond drawn from the exhaustive statutory list, and herplaatsing, redeployment within a reasonable period into another suitable role, has to be impossible or unreasonable. A good reason on its own is not enough, and neither is an offer of money.

The ground then has to be approved by somebody outside the business before notice can be given. Five routes end a Dutch contract lawfully: permission from UWV followed by notice; dissolution by the kantonrechter; mutual consent through a vaststellingsovereenkomst; dismissal during a valid proeftijd, which article 7:669(7) BW takes outside the grounds regime altogether; and ontslag op staande voet for a dringende reden, which is rare and carries a high risk of being overturned.

The proeftijd route is narrower than it sounds, because a proeftijd is void in a contract of at most six months and void again in most successive contracts. Where the clause is void there is no probation to dismiss in, and a dismissal in week two is a dismissal without permission. Our guide to Dutch employment contracts sets out when the clause holds.

Contracting out of any of this does not work. Article 7:671a(9) BW makes void any clause that excludes or limits the duty to seek permission, or that tries to extend the four-week life of a permission once granted. A clause in an employment contract giving the employer a free hand to terminate on notice has no effect in the Netherlands.

Article 7:669(3) BW lists the grounds and the list is closed. Ground a is bedrijfseconomisch: roles disappear because the business ceases, or must necessarily disappear over a forward-looking period of at least 26 weeks because of measures taken for efficient management on business-economic grounds. Ground b is long-term incapacity. Ground c is frequent absence through illness with unacceptable consequences for the business, provided that is not the result of inadequate employer care for working conditions and no recovery is expected within 26 weeks.

Ground b only becomes available once the 104-week period in article 7:670(1) BW has expired, it is plausible that there will be no recovery within 26 weeks, and the work cannot be done in adapted form within that period. Until then an employer generally may not give notice to an employee who is unfit through illness at all. What the employer has to keep paying across those two years is set out in our guide to Dutch sick pay rules for 2026.

Ground d is disfunctioneren, and it is conditional: the employer must have told the employee in time, given them sufficient opportunity to improve, and the unsuitability must not be the result of inadequate employer care for training or working conditions. Ground e is verwijtbaar handelen of nalaten, a culpable act or omission. Ground f is a serious conscientious objection to doing the work where it cannot be done in adapted form. Ground g is a verstoorde arbeidsverhouding, and ground h is a residual category of other circumstances, applied narrowly.

Ground i, the cumulatiegrond, is a combination of circumstances from two or more of grounds c, d, e, g and h. Note which grounds feed it: not a, not b, not f. It is also a priced route. Where the kantonrechter dissolves on ground i it may award the employee up to half the transitievergoeding on top of the transitievergoeding itself, under article 7:671b(8) BW.

Herplaatsing is the second half of article 7:669(1) BW and it is tested separately from the ground. The employer has to show that redeployment within a reasonable period, if necessary with training, into another suitable role is not possible or not reasonable. A redundancy that is genuine on the numbers can still fail because an open vacancy elsewhere in the business was never offered.

Suitable does not mean identical. It means a role the employee can reasonably be expected to do, which may sit at a different level or in a different team. Documentation is what carries the argument: vacancy lists, what was offered, what was declined and why.

For a redundancy on ground a there is a further selection rule. The afspiegelingsbeginsel governs which employees in a category of interchangeable roles are put forward, so the employer does not choose freely among them. UWV publishes what it expects on that, along with what a complete application has to contain, on its page on dismissal for business-economic reasons.

The practical consequence is that the redeployment work has to happen before the application is filed, not after permission is refused.

The ground picks the forum. UWV handles grounds a and b under article 7:671a(1) BW. The kantonrechter handles grounds c to i under article 7:671b(1)(a), and also handles a and b where UWV has refused permission, under article 7:671b(1)(b). For ground a a CAO may designate an independent and impartial committee in place of UWV, under article 7:671a(2) BW.

The outcomes differ in kind. UWV grants toestemming, permission, and the employer then gives notice itself, in writing and stating the reason. The kantonrechter does not grant permission; it dissolves the contract by order. An employer that wins at UWV still has a notice period to serve, while an employer that wins in court has an end date set for it.

A UWV application comes in three parts: part A on the employer, part B on each employee, and part C on the business case, filed through the werkgeversportaal with eHerkenning. The employee then has two weeks to file a verweer and hoor en wederhoor follows. UWV states that handling a complete ontslagaanvraag usually takes about four weeks, and sets out what happens next on its page on what follows a dismissal application.

Permission, once given, is valid for four weeks from the date of the decision. If UWV refuses there is no appeal to UWV: the employer may take the case to the kantonrechter within two months, or file a fresh application only on new information. And an employer that dismisses without permission leaves the employee two months to apply to the court for reinstatement of the contract or for compensation.

Notice under article 7:672 BW is given against the end of the month unless something else has been agreed in writing or follows from custom. The employer’s period depends on length of service on the day notice is given: one month under five years, two months from five to under ten, three months from ten to under fifteen, and four months at fifteen years and over.

The employee’s own notice is one month. Where the employee has reached AOW age the employer’s notice is one month regardless of service. For an employee whose working volume is not fixed, the notice period is the on-call period under article 7:628a BW, which is four days rather than a month.

There is a time credit, and it is the reason the UWV route is less slow than it first looks. Where UWV grants permission, the notice period is shortened by the time the procedure took, measured from receipt of the complete application to the date of the decision, but at least one month must always remain. Article 7:671b(9)(a) BW does the same job for a court dissolution.

The periods can be varied, within limits. The employer’s statutory period can be shortened only by CAO, and lengthened only in writing. Getting notice wrong is not a technicality: a party giving notice against an earlier day than applies owes the other the pay for the period the contract should have run, and the kantonrechter may moderate that but not below the pay for the statutory period and not below three months’ pay.

The formula in article 7:673(2) BW is one third of a month’s pay for each year the arbeidsovereenkomst lasted, with a proportionate part for any period shorter than a year. The maximum for 2026 is € 102.000,00, or a sum equal to one year’s pay where that is higher. That figure sits in the statute text itself and is indexed every 1 January.

It is owed from the first day of employment. There is no qualifying period, no minimum length of service and no threshold. What counts as pay for the formula is fixed by order in council rather than by the employment contract, so the base is not simply the monthly salary line and is worth confirming before any figure is put in front of an employee.

The trigger that surprises foreign employers is non-renewal. Article 7:673(1)(a) BW covers a contract terminated by the employer, dissolved at the employer’s request, or not continued after expiry on the employer’s initiative. Letting a fixed-term contract simply run out is the third of those, and it carries the transitievergoeding with it. Chained contracts with intervals of at most six months are added together for the service calculation, and so is consecutive employment with employers that must reasonably be regarded as each other’s successors.

It is not owed in every case. Article 7:673(7) BW excludes an employee under 18 averaging at most twelve hours a week, an ending on reaching a statutory or agreed retirement age, and an ending that results from ernstig verwijtbaar handelen of nalaten by the employee, although the kantonrechter can still award all or part of it where withholding it would be unacceptable. It is also not owed where the employer is insolvent.

Dutch terminations are commonly settled by mutual consent, which avoids UWV and the court entirely. The instrument is a vaststellingsovereenkomst, and article 7:670b(1) BW makes it valid only if it is in writing. An oral agreement to part company, however clear, does not end the contract.

The employee then has a statutory right to change their mind. Under article 7:670b(2) BW they may dissolve the agreement without giving reasons within 14 days of the date it came about, by written declaration to the employer. The employer must state that right in the agreement, and if it does not the period is three weeks instead. Any clause excluding or limiting the right is void, and the right does not apply where the parties enter a new agreement within six months of a previous dissolution.

That single clause is the most important practical fact about Dutch settlements. An employer that leaves it out of the document gives the employee an extra week to walk away from a deal that has already been announced internally. Settlement agreements are also commonly drafted with the employee’s benefit position in mind, which is why the wording of the end date and of the reason for the ending is negotiated rather than dictated.

A transitievergoeding is not automatically owed on a mutual termination: article 7:673(1) BW does not list it. In practice a figure is agreed, and the statutory sum is where the conversation usually starts, but that is practice rather than law. A reader who wants the contrast with at-will termination will find it in our comparison of US and Dutch termination rules.

All of this applies whoever the employer on the contract is. Where you hire through an Employer of Record Netherlands arrangement, the EOR becomes the legal employer of the person you hire, so the ground, the permission, the notice and the settlement sit with the employer named on the arbeidsovereenkomst. Your business decides when a role ends; the process of ending it lawfully runs where the contract sits.

That makes the provider’s handling of a dismissal worth testing before you need it rather than during. The questions that separate providers on this point are set out in our post on how to choose an EOR in the Netherlands.