Duty to notify under the Employment Conditions (Posted Workers in the European Union) Act: Foreign employers and self-employed persons with a temporary assignment in the Netherlands

Service providers and recipients

The Act makes a distinction between service providers (foreign employers), self-employed persons and service recipients (clients). Foreign employers and foreign self-employed persons in certain sectors have a duty to provide notification in the Dutch online notification portal (postedworkers.nl) of what work they will be performing and when. Foreign employers also have to provide notification of the arrival of any of their employees.

You are a service provider if, as a foreign employer, you:

• come to the Netherlands temporarily with your own personnel to provide a service;
• are a multinational company and are posting employees to your own offices in the Netherlands; or
• are a foreign temporary employment agency and assign agency workers to a temporary job in the Netherlands.

If you are a self-employed foreigner and will be coming to the Netherlands on a temporary assignment, you must also provide notification in certain cases.

Service recipients

The service recipient (your client) is the party in the Netherlands for whom you will perform the work and with whom you have signed an agreement (building contract or service contract).

Subcontracting

If you as a foreign employer or self-employed person contract a third company or a self-employed person from another member state to work for your client in the Netherlands, this is defined as subcontracting. At that point you are the subcontractor’s client. The third company must provide notification of its own personnel, or the self-employed person with a duty to notify must do so, and you must check the notification.

Providing notification online before you start work

You must provide notification of through the online notification portal for foreign workers (postedworkers.nl) before starting work in the Netherlands. The client must check if your notification is accurate.

Information you should provide as a foreign employer

As a foreign employer, you should provide the following in the online notification portal:

• the identity of the person making the notification;
• your company’s details;
• the details of your contact person in the Netherlands (as referred to in section 7 of the Act);
• your Dutch client’s details;
• the sector in which you will operate in the Netherlands;
• the address/place where the work will be performed;
• how long the work is expected to take;
• the identity of the person responsible for paying salaries;
• the identity of the worker(s) who will come to work temporarily in the Netherlands; and
• the presence of an A1 form or some other proof of where social insurance contributions will be paid for your worker(s) as your contribution to the applicable social security scheme.

You should also consult the checklist of information required from foreign employers. It includes more information that is required for a notification in the online notification portal.

Who can be a contact person and what do they do?

A contact person is the point of contact in the Netherlands for a foreign employer. Contact persons must thus be present in the Netherlands to answer the Dutch Labour Inspectorate’s questions about a posting.

A contact person must also be authorised to send and receive documents regarding the posting. Only natural persons may be contact persons. Posted workers may act as contact persons provided that the Dutch Labour Inspectorate can reach them throughout the period of the firm’s operations in the Netherlands. An administrative office may not be a contact person, but a person employed by an administrative office may.

Information you should provide as a self-employed person with a duty to notify

As a self-employed person with a duty to notify, you should provide notification of the following in the online notification portal:

• your identity;
• your company’s details;
• your client’s details;
• the sector in which you will operate in the Netherlands;
• the address/place where the work will be performed;
• how long the work is expected to take;
• the identity of the person responsible for paying your salary; and
• the presence of an A1 form or some other proof of where social insurance contributions will be paid for you towards the applicable social security scheme.

Sectors in which foreign self-employed persons have a duty to notify

If you are a self-employed foreign national without employees, you have a duty to provide notification of a temporary assignment in the Netherlands in one of the following sectors:

• construction;
• cleaning;
• food industry;
• metal industry;
• healthcare;
• window-cleaning;
• agriculture and horticulture.

Additional rules apply to the freight transport sector.

Information on the digital copy of the notification received by the client

The copy of the notification that the client can view in the online notification portal includes the client’s identity and the identity of the employer’s posted worker(s), the address/place where the work will be performed and the nature and duration of the work. 

Service providers with regular assignments in the Netherlands

If one of the following situations applies to you, you have a limited (annual) notification obligation:

• You have a small business (1-9 employees), established within 100km of the Dutch border, and regularly take on assignments in the Netherlands in a sector for which a duty to notify applies.
• You are a self-employed foreign national without employees, established within 100km of the Dutch border, and regularly take on assignments in the Netherlands.
• You work in road freight transport.

In these cases, you only need to provide notification of your activities once a year. This arrangement does not apply to the construction industry or temporary employment agencies.

No duty to notify

You have no duty to provide notification that your employees are working on an assignment in the Netherlands if:

• your company is based in the Netherlands and your employees work under a Dutch contract;
• you post employees within the Netherlands;
• your employees perform work in certain sub-sectors of the freight transport sector;
• your employees perform work in public administration, government services or extraterritorial organisations;
• your employees perform certain types of occasional work in the Netherlands, for example participating in business meetings, carrying out urgent maintenance or repairs or attending conferences. See the full list of categories and conditions for occasional work.

Workers posted from non-EU, non-EEA countries other than Switzerland

The duty to notify also applies to temporarily posted workers in the Netherlands from non-EU, non-EEA countries other than Switzerland. These workers, too, have the right to the main employment conditions of Dutch workers. Additional requirements may also be imposed. For example, a worker from a third country who is posted to the Netherlands for more than 3 months needs a residence permit.

Administrative obligations under the Employment Conditions (Posted Workers in the European Union) Act

Employers from EEA countries and Switzerland with personnel on temporary assignment in the Netherlands must comply with a number of administrative obligations:

• the obligation to have certain documents available at the address/place in the Netherlands where the work is performed (or to provide immediate digital access to these documents). The documents concerned are employment contracts, pay slips, overviews of working hours, A1 forms and proofs of payment. They must be available in Dutch, English, German and/or French, either digitally or in printed form;
• the obligation to provide information: the obligation to supply on request to the Dutch Labour Inspectorate all information needed for enforcement of the Act;
• the obligation to designate a contact person (point of contact) in the Netherlands whom the Dutch Labour Inspectorate can approach. This may be a posted worker;
• the duty to notify: the obligation to announce through the Dutch online notification portal for foreign workers (postedworkers.nl) work to be performed in the Netherlands.

Enforcement of the Act by the Dutch Labour Inspectorate

The Dutch Labour Inspectorate checks whether foreign employers, self-employed persons and clients in the Netherlands comply with the Employment Conditions (Posted Workers in the European Union) Act. Along with the Dutch Tax Administration and the Social Insurance Bank, the Inspectorate has direct access to all notifications. The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) can request data from the online notification portal to help it carry out its work. The unions can also request information in order to check compliance with the provisions of collective agreements. If checks show that you failed to give advance notice of your or your employees’ arrival or that the information you provided is incorrect, both you and your client in the Netherlands can be fined. You can find the amounts of the fines here (only in Dutch).