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An employee continued to work for the same organisation as a self-employed person after his employment contract ended, and did so for almost fifteen years. 

Particularly in the current debate on bogus self-employment, one might expect such an arrangement to be quickly reclassified as an employment contract. However, in a recent ruling, the Court of Appeal in The Hague reached a different conclusion.

The IT specialist initially worked as a salaried employee for the Union of Water Authorities. After his employment ended, he began carrying out work for the Union through his own company. When that collaboration ended in 2025, he argued that, even after he left the organisation, an employment contract had in fact continued to exist.

The Court of Appeal acknowledges that there are clear circumstances supporting this view. For instance, he had previously been an employee of the same organisation, the collaboration lasted an exceptionally long time, and he always carried out the work personally. Nevertheless, according to the Court of Appeal, the circumstances pointing to self-employment carry greater weight.

In this regard, the court pays particular attention to the way in which the parties have actually shaped their relationship over the years. The contracts for services always had a specific term, and new contracts were renegotiated. The contractor made counter-proposals, sought advice and, in various years, drafted the contracts himself. The terms and conditions also changed regularly. For example, the hourly rate eventually rose to €79.00 excluding VAT, and negotiations took place on matters including the payment terms and intellectual property rights.

The Court of Appeal also identified characteristics of self-employment in the day-to-day performance of the work. He was free to decide when to work his hours and claimed varying numbers of hours each month. There were even months in which no hours were claimed. He charged VAT, no payroll taxes or social security contributions were deducted, and he stated that he worked for other clients as well as De Unie. In addition, he held public liability insurance and, according to the Court of Appeal, bore his own commercial risk.

Equally relevant is the relationship of authority. Although evaluation meetings were scheduled on paper, they did not take place in practice. Moreover, there was no one within De Unie who could assess the substance of his work. He decided for himself how to carry out his duties. For De Unie, it was the result that counted above all else. Nor was he required to adhere to all internal rules and procedures, and he did not take part in the regular fortnightly staff meetings. Furthermore, the actual nature of his work had also changed significantly compared with his duties as an employee at the time.

Finally, it is noteworthy that De Unie at one point asked him whether he wished to enter into an employment contract for 16 hours per week for his work. According to the Court of Appeal, he himself rejected that offer.

All things considered, the Court of Appeal ruled that the nature of the employment relationship had indeed changed following the termination of the original employment contract and that it was genuinely a ‘self-employed contractor agreement’. The fact that someone was previously an employee is therefore a relevant circumstance, but not decisive. Even in the case of a very long-term collaboration with the same organisation, a genuine contract for services may exist if the negotiations, contractual terms and actual performance demonstrate sufficient entrepreneurial initiative and independence.

Incidentally, De Unie did not emerge from the proceedings entirely unscathed. As the contractual relationship had lasted for more than ten years and the parties had agreed on a further extension, the Court of Appeal ruled that De Unie should have given at least six months’ notice that the contract would be terminated. As this had not been done, the self-employed person was awarded € 33,072.00 in damages.

Should you have any questions regarding this matter, please contact Dennis Oud, Tessa Sipkema, Elke Hofman-Bijvank or myself. 

You can read the judgment here. 

Enforcement by public authorities is a common topic in environmental law and takes various forms. This blog discusses the basics of enforcement. It will examine the grounds for enforcement, the various forms of enforcement and associated procedures, and the legal remedies available to members of the public and businesses.

The grounds for enforcement

Enforcement often takes place following a report or a so-called enforcement request from third parties, after which an inspection is carried out. Depending on the enforcement policy of the relevant administrative body, the latter may also carry out inspections on its own initiative. Once the administrative body has identified a breach, the enforcement procedure is set in motion.

An offence may, for example, involve the use of a building in contravention of the environmental plan, or structures erected without planning permission. There must be a breach of a law or regulation. This may be a local authority regulation, such as the environmental plan or the General Local By-laws (APV), but may also be legislation and regulations issued by central government, such as the Environment Act or the Building Works in the Living Environment Decree (Bbl).

The offence that has been detected must be brought to an end and, in some cases, (also) punished. However, the administrative body does not proceed directly to enforcement.

Warning or notice of intention

Once the offence has been detected, in most cases the offender is first notified of it. In some cases, the offender first receives a warning from the administrative body. The warning highlights the offence and instructs the offender to cease the offence or ensure it does not occur again. If the offender complies, no enforcement action is taken.

A warning is not a requirement, but a policy decision by an administrative body, in which the urgency and nature of the offence play a role.

It is therefore also possible to send a notice of intent to enforce directly to the offender without issuing a prior warning. This means that the offender is informed of the offence and is given the opportunity to cease the offence before enforcement takes place.

The offender may submit a statement of views in response to a notice of intent. This is the offender’s response to the established infringement, in which they may, for example, explain how the infringement came about, or why there is no infringement at all and enforcement is therefore not warranted. Normally, a two-week period is allowed for submitting a statement of views.

There are also cases in which neither a warning nor a notice of intent is issued. This is the case where there is such urgency in bringing the infringement to an end that there is no time for a notice of intent and a statement of views. This is referred to as urgent administrative enforcement and/or extremely urgent administrative enforcement, but will not be elaborated on further here.

Enforcement measures

If the infringement continues after a warning and the notice of intent have been issued, and the statement of views does not cause the administrative body to change its mind, ‘proper’ enforcement begins.

There are three enforcement instruments for this purpose:

• Order subject to a penalty payment
• Order subject to administrative coercion:
• Administrative fine

These three instruments and the associated procedures are set out in detail below.
Incidentally, the revocation of a licence can also be regarded as a means of enforcement, but this is not discussed further here.

Order subject to a penalty payment

An order subject to a penalty payment is a remedial sanction. The aim is to put an end to the infringement and restore the legal situation. To achieve this, the offender is given a period of time in which to cease the infringement. This is known as the grace period.

If the breach has not been remedied by the end of the grace period, the offender must pay a penalty payment. The amount of the penalty payment varies from case to case and, in principle, depends on the government’s enforcement policy, but may also be influenced by specific circumstances.

An example: the municipality of Rotterdam has established that the firm Vis has erected a new fence on its premises. According to the municipality of Rotterdam’s environmental plan, such fencing may be no more than two metres high. The firm Vis’s fence is three metres high. This therefore constitutes a breach of the environmental plan. The municipality wants the fence to be lowered to the permitted two metres. After sending a notice of intent (and, where applicable, a warning beforehand), the fence has not been lowered and the breach therefore continues. The municipality has issued Vis with an order subject to a penalty payment. The fence must be lowered to two metres within six weeks. If Vis fails to do so on time, a penalty payment of €2,000.00 must be paid.

Administrative order

An administrative order is also a remedial sanction. The aim is to put an end to the infringement and restore the lawful situation. Here too, the offender is first given a period of time in which to put an end to the infringement (the grace period).

The difference from an order subject to a penalty payment is that, if the infringement has not been brought to an end by the expiry of the grace period, no penalty payment is payable. In the case of an order subject to administrative enforcement, any infringement that continues after the expiry of the grace period is brought to an end by the administrative body itself, at the offender’s expense.

An order subject to administrative enforcement is often used in cases of urgency or danger, where the financial pressure of a penalty payment is ineffective, but also where the offender is unable to remedy the breach themselves.

Example: during an inspection of a residential renovation project by a property maintenance company, the inspectors establish that there is a risk of collapse. The offender is given a short deadline to remedy the risk of collapse themselves. If the offender fails to do so in time, the administrative body will have the necessary work carried out, given the danger to the surrounding area. The bill for the work will be sent to the offender.

Administrative fine

An administrative fine is a punitive sanction. Its purpose is not to remedy an offence, but to punish the offender for committing the offence and to deter them from committing it again.

There is no grace period attached to an administrative fine. The only time limit that applies is the payment deadline. In principle, the fine must be paid by the offender within six weeks.

An administrative fine cannot be imposed in every case. The law permits this only in specific cases and situations. These include, for example, the accommodation of migrant workers and letting rooms to students, as well as breaches of the Alcohol Act. For most offences relating to building regulations, there is no authority to impose fines, and remedial sanctions must be used instead.

There are also cases in which an administrative fine is imposed alongside a remedial sanction. In such cases, the remedial sanction is intended to bring the offence to an end, whilst the administrative fine serves as an additional penalty or punishment.

An example: a property is let by the owner to four students without the necessary licence. The letting must be stopped. To this end, an order subject to a penalty payment is imposed. However, the administrative body also wishes to penalise the owner for the offence. To do so, an administrative fine is imposed.

How is enforcement brought to an end?

A number of steps can be taken to bring enforcement to an end.

For remedial sanctions, there are three:

• Comply with the order within the grace period. The breach will then be rectified in time and enforcement will no longer be necessary. No penalty payment will need to be made and no administrative coercion will be applied.
• Regularisation: in some cases, the infringement can still be authorised. If that authorisation is granted in time (i.e. before the expiry of the grace period), the infringement ceases to exist and enforcement can be discontinued. No penalty payment needs to be made and no administrative coercion needs to be applied.
• Legal remedies: legal remedies are available against the remedial sanctions. The first step is to lodge an objection. If that objection is declared unfounded, an appeal may still be lodged with the administrative court and – in most cases – a further appeal with the Administrative Law Division of the Council of State. If the offender is successful in their objection or (further) appeal, the enforcement proceedings are dropped.   

The situation is slightly different for administrative fines. As an administrative fine is not a remedial sanction, there is no need for the offence to be regularised or brought to an end. In this case, enforcement is not an ongoing procedure, but is based solely on a single act: the imposition of the fine. That fine must be paid. To avoid having to pay the administrative fine, the same legal remedies are available as for remedial sanctions (objection and (further) appeal).

Please note: in the case of an order subject to a penalty payment, it is therefore not sufficient simply to pay the penalty. After all, the offence has not yet been brought to an end. As long as this is not the case, enforcement will continue.

Conclusion

These are the basics of enforcement by public authorities. Are you facing enforcement action, or do you fear that this may happen in the near future? If so, please contact Gerard van der Wende or myself.

An employee who regularly works on Sundays usually receives a Sunday allowance for this if a collective agreement applies. But what happens to that allowance if the employee falls ill? The District Court of The Hague recently considered precisely this question.

In this case, the collective agreement for staff of large retail chains and the food industry (VGL-CAO) applied to the employment contract. That collective agreement stipulates that, during illness, an employee receives 100 per cent of the wages to which they would have been entitled whilst performing their normal duties for the first 26 weeks, 90 per cent thereafter, and 80 per cent in the second year of illness. At the same time, the collective agreement stipulates that allowances for special working hours, such as the Sunday allowance, do not fall within the definition of ‘wages’.

Prior to reporting sick, the employee regularly worked on Sundays and therefore regularly received a Sunday allowance. In his view, this allowance should therefore have continued to be paid during his sick leave. His reasoning was that he would also have received the allowance had he been performing his duties as normal. Sounds logical, doesn’t it?

The subdistrict court did not agree. As the VGL collective agreement explicitly stipulates that allowances for special working hours do not fall within the definition of ‘wages’, the Sunday allowance did not have to be continued during sick leave under the terms of the collective agreement. 

The fact that, in practice, the employee worked on Sundays on a regular basis and therefore always received the Sunday allowance in the normal course of his duties did not, in the court’s view, alter this. The phrase ‘to which he would have been entitled in the normal course of his duties’ does not imply that the ‘fixed’ allowances should be paid in contravention of the concept of wages, the court held.

However, this did not bring the discussion to a close. The statutory provision for continued payment of wages during sickness sets a minimum threshold. Under Article 7:629 of the Dutch Civil Code, an employee is, in principle, entitled to 70 per cent of the (maximum daily) wage. When determining that statutory wage, structural allowances may well play a role. No deviation from this statutory protection may be made to the detriment of the employee.

In this case, however, that proved not to be a problem. Under the collective agreement, the employer paid 100 per cent of the wage specified in the collective agreement during the period of sickness, followed by 90 per cent and then 80 per cent. The employer was able to demonstrate that the employee thus consistently received more than the statutory minimum of 70 per cent, even when the Sunday allowance was included in that statutory calculation. The subdistrict court therefore concluded that the collective agreement provision did not work to the employee’s disadvantage. The employee was therefore not entitled to additional payment of the Sunday allowance.

This ruling demonstrates that it is not only the wage components actually received that are relevant, but also how the wage is defined in the applicable collective agreement. Under the law, the employee was therefore entitled to the Sunday allowance whilst on sick leave, but a collective agreement may exclude certain allowances, provided that the employee receives at least what they are entitled to by law whilst on sick leave.

Do you have any questions about continued payment of wages whilst your employees are on sick leave? Please contact Dennis Oud, Tessa Sipkema, Elke Hofman-Bijvank or Noa Bilogrevic.

You can read the ruling here. 

Normally, an enforcement decision by an administrative body is sent to the offender by letter. The offender may then lodge an objection and/or appeal against that written decision. In exceptional cases, there is no written decision and the administrative body merely informs the offender orally that enforcement is to take place. In its judgment of 5 August 2026, the Administrative Law Division of the Council of State had to rule on the scope of the rights to lodge an objection and/or appeal in such cases.

The case discussed in the ruling concerned a scaffold in Groningen. The owner of a property had a permit to leave the scaffold on the pavement temporarily, from 8 November to 3 December 2021. However, during an inspection on 22 December 2021, it transpired that the scaffold had not been removed. Enforcement officers then informed the property owner by telephone that the scaffolding had to be removed by 24 December at the latest.

During an inspection on 24 December, it became apparent that the owner had not yet done so. He was then told that the scaffolding had to be removed by 3.00 pm that afternoon, otherwise the council would have it removed at the owner’s expense. The owner did not let it come to that. He had the scaffolding dismantled and removed by his own scaffolder. He subsequently asked the municipal executive to put in writing what he considered to be the administrative order that had been imposed on him. The council refused, as it took the view that no decision had been taken at all that needed to be set out in writing.

The owner lodged an objection against the refusal to put the (alleged) administrative enforcement order in writing. The municipal executive declared that objection unfounded, whereupon the owner took the matter to court.

The court ruled in favour of the municipal executive. According to the court, there was no question of (extremely) urgent administrative enforcement, as the owner ultimately had the scaffolding removed himself. The council therefore did not actually proceed to impose an administrative order. According to the court, there was also no question of an ordinary administrative order, as this is only possible if a written decision is issued, which was precisely what was missing in this case.

The owner did not accept this and lodged an appeal with the Division. The Division ruled as follows. According to Article 5:21 of the General Administrative Law Act (Awb), an order subject to administrative coercion consists of two elements: an obligation to remedy a contravention and the administrative body’s power to carry out that remedy itself if necessary. In view of that wording, the Division held that it is not decisive whether the administrative body actually enforced the order. After all, a standard order subject to administrative coercion is specifically intended to ensure that the offender remedies the breach themselves, so that actual administrative coercion (the council remedying the breach) is not necessary. 

Although the owner ultimately removed the scaffolding himself, an administrative order had indeed been issued. The remedial measure was clear, there was a specific deadline by which the situation had to be rectified, and the notice was addressed to the offender. Furthermore, it was clear that this was not a non-binding request to remove the scaffolding.

It then remained to be assessed what legal remedies were available against a decision not issued in writing. The Division equates the oral administrative enforcement order with a (written) decision, meaning that the same legal remedies are available against it. The reason for this is that, by refusing to put the administrative enforcement order in writing, the municipal executive was able to prevent the administrative court from assessing the lawfulness of the order. According to the Division, this is not the intention.

The Division’s final ruling was therefore that an administrative enforcement order had been issued and that the council was required to assess the substance of the objections raised by the owner against it. This not only gives the owner the opportunity to obtain a ruling on the lawfulness of the enforcement action, but also – should the enforcement indeed prove to be unlawful – to claim compensation.

Do you have any questions about (proposed) enforcement by an administrative body? Please contact Gerard van der Wende or myself.

You can read the judgment here. 

An employer had doubts as to whether an employee was working sufficient hours whilst working from home. Without discussing this with him beforehand, his log-in and log-out details were examined. On the basis of that information, the employee was summarily dismissed. The subdistrict court judge firmly rejected this.

According to the judge, the employer had insufficient grounds for the covert investigation. The employee was permitted to work from home, had been performing well shortly beforehand and, moreover, had previously indicated that he was experiencing a heavy workload. Furthermore, it could not be readily deduced from the login records how many hours he had actually worked. After all, tasks such as consultations, planning or analysis can also take place without someone being constantly logged into the company network.

According to the court, the employer should first have engaged in dialogue. A warning, clear agreements on availability, time recording or a performance improvement plan would have been less severe and more appropriate measures. The summary dismissal was therefore declared invalid. The employer was ordered to pay, amongst other things, a transition payment, compensation for wrongful termination and fair compensation of € 60,000.00.

For employers, the message is clear. Concerns regarding an employee’s performance, attendance or the number of hours worked must be taken seriously. However, covert monitoring and summary dismissal require a very careful approach. The employer must be able to demonstrate that there is a genuine reason for a covert investigation. The court refers to this as a ‘legitimate interest’. You should therefore ensure there is a clear justification, an appropriate monitoring policy and a valid basis under the GDPR. Discuss any suspicions with the employee first and consider whether a less drastic measure is possible. A carefully compiled file can ultimately make the difference between a lawful decision and costly legal proceedings.

You can read the ruling here.

On 26 June 2026, the Gelderland District Court issued an interim ruling on the status of the facts in a final judgement. 

What was the issue? A married couple had built an extension to their home in Arnhem. This consisted of a conservatory, a canopy, an extension to the garage and a lean-to. The extension had been in place since 2008. However, it later transpired that part of it was situated on land zoned as ‘Green’, which was not permitted under the local plan. An environmental permit had never been applied for. 

In February 2023, a local resident submitted an enforcement request, following which an order subject to a penalty payment was imposed. An objection and appeal procedure ensued. In its ruling at the end of 2025, the court upheld the couple’s appeal, as the council’s calculation of the extension’s surface area was incorrect. The local authority did not appeal against this court ruling. However, in March 2026, a new decision was taken, upholding the order subject to a penalty payment. The couple then lodged a further appeal, partly because, in the new decision, the local authority had suddenly assumed that the extension encroached by 1.31 metres into the green belt. 

In the 2025 ruling, the court had in fact held that ‘it was not in dispute between the parties’ that the extension encroached 30 centimetres into the green belt. As the local authority had not appealed against the ruling, the couple believed that the local authority was bound by that 30-centimetre figure and had therefore wrongly assumed, in the new decision of March 2026, that the encroachment was 1.31 metres. 

The court did not agree with this and ruled as follows. It is true that an administrative body which does not lodge an appeal (or a further appeal) against a judgment is bound by the legal findings in that judgment. This means, therefore, that the administrative body accepts the judgment, concurs with the court’s assessment and must also comply with it. 

However, contrary to the couple’s assertion, this does not apply to the ‘mere statement of facts’. This means that the court’s statement of the facts – in which it was held that ‘it was not in dispute between the parties’ that the extension encroached 30 centimetres into the green belt – could not be binding on the local authority. The council was therefore entitled to base its decision on a depth of 1.31 metres within the green zone. 

Incidentally, this did not result in the couple’s appeal being dismissed as unfounded. The court ruled that the local authority had failed to provide sufficient justification as to why enforcement in this case was proportionate. Whilst the court acknowledged that the 1.31-metre encroachment was more than a minor one, it found that there was no serious encroachment on the green space, as only 1.31 metres of the 15-metre-deep green strip was occupied by the extension. The local authority had therefore failed to demonstrate sufficiently what interests were served by the enforcement, whilst it was clear that the couple had a significant interest in preventing the costly demolition of the extension. 

This ruling thus emphasises two important legal principles. Firstly, the court makes it clear that an irrevocable ruling does not mean that the facts have also become irrevocable and indisputable. Secondly, the court reiterates that enforcement must always be proportionate. 

Do you have any questions about enforcement proceedings? Please contact Gerard van der Wende or myself. 

You can read the ruling here.