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A recent ruling by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal on Uber shows that the Deliveroo framework remains the basis, but that the outcome can change if “entrepreneurship” is firmly and concretely substantiated.

As in Deliveroo, the court bases its ruling on Section 7:610 of the Dutch Civil Code and the well-known principles: you determine whether someone is an employee by weighing up all the circumstances together, without a fixed order of priority. In an earlier interim judgment, the court had already ruled in general terms that the elements pointing towards an employment contract outweigh the contraindications, but that (external) entrepreneurship could tip the balance.

Since the Supreme Court ruling in 2025, one point has become particularly clear: entrepreneurship (point ix from Deliveroo) is not “by nature” more important than other circumstances, but it can make a difference in the overall assessment. As a result, the court in this case must also consider circumstances that do not relate exclusively to the platform relationship. In practice, questions such as the following often arise: does the person make substantial investments (e.g. in a car), does the person have multiple clients, does the person recruit their own customers, what is their tax position, and does the person really bear the costs and risks?

The court applies this in concrete terms in this case. The trade union demanded (in summary) a declaration that all drivers are employees and that the Taxi Transport Collective Labour Agreement therefore applies, with the associated allowances. However, for the drivers who are the focus of these proceedings, the court concludes that there is no employment contract because their entrepreneurship is strongly substantiated. The court cites, among other things: substantial investments (such as the car), freedom in working hours, their own strategy for accepting/refusing rides and associated earnings, and risks of liability and incapacity for work.
 
At the same time, the court does not rule out the possibility that there may be individual drivers who should be regarded as employees. However, due to a lack of sufficient concrete data on individual circumstances, the court was unable to identify individual drivers or clearly defined groups to whom this would apply. As a result, no general judgement can be given on the compensation claimed.

In short: Deliveroo remains the benchmark, but this ruling shows that well-documented entrepreneurship can really tip the balance and that broad, general claims without hard facts about (groups of) drivers are more likely to fail.
 
If you have any questions about your self-employed contracts, please contact Tessa Sipkema, Elke Hofman-Bijvank or Dennis Oud.

You can read the ruling here.

Many municipalities have a reactive enforcement policy. This means that, in general, enforcement only takes place in response to a report or enforcement request from a third party (interested party). This is because municipalities often simply do not have the capacity to actively ‘search’ for violations. But what if the report is not made by a third party (interested party), but by a civil servant?

That was the question that the Overijssel District Court had to answer in its ruling of January 12, 2026. This case concerned a house in the municipality of Hengelo, where several air conditioners had been installed on the outside of the house. Following a report from a municipal employee, a municipal inspector carried out an inspection and found that an environmental permit should have been applied for two of the air conditioners. This had not been done. A penalty was then imposed. The owner of the house disagreed with this. He believed that this was contrary to the principle of equality, because the municipality had deviated from its own reactive enforcement policy by enforcing the law in response to a report from a civil servant.

The court first of all states that, based on the principle of equality, a consistent and well-considered administrative policy must be pursued. The administration must follow a general course of action with regard to its actions in individual similar cases. It is established case law of the Division that it is permissible to set priorities in the context of enforcement policy with a view to effective enforcement. For example, prioritization may mean that certain violations are only enforced in response to a complaint or an enforcement request from an interested party.

In this case, the decisive factor is that the report was made by a municipal employee who could not be regarded as an interested party. The court did not agree with the board's assertion that it does not matter who makes the report, even if it is a municipal employee. The court ruled that the council's policy can only be interpreted as meaning that enforcement requests or reports must come from third parties with an interest. Municipal employees should not be included in this, because this would still give the council control over whether and when it takes enforcement action. This could create the appearance of arbitrariness.

The conclusion that can be drawn from this ruling is that, in principle, the municipality only acts on the basis of reports and requests from third parties. A report from a civil servant may not lead to an inspection, because the municipal executive can still decide for itself when to enforce the law. 

Do you have any questions about an enforcement request or enforcement procedure? Please contact Gerard van der Wende or Fleur Huisman. 

You can read the ruling here.

A recent ruling by the subdistrict court in Utrecht clearly illustrates this once again. An employee joined a biotech start-up that focuses on developing cancer therapies as a researcher. On her first day at work, she announced that she was pregnant. Two days later (after the weekend), she was dismissed during her probationary period. According to the employer, this was due to sudden financial setbacks.

That story did not hold up.

Less than ten days later, a vacancy for exactly the same position appeared. And not much later, another researcher was actually hired. It is remarkable that the financial situation would suddenly improve within such a short period of time. The subdistrict court therefore did not consider the employer's stated reason to be plausible. The employer's conduct could only lead to the conclusion that the pregnancy was the reason for the dismissal during the probationary period. The defense that the employer was unaware of the pregnancy was also rejected: a direct supervisor did know about it, and that knowledge is attributed to the employer.

The bottom line: yes, an employment contract may be terminated during the probationary period. In principle, a financial reason is a valid reason for dismissal during the probationary period. However, this does not apply if the real reason is discriminatory. Pregnancy is direct discrimination on the basis of gender. 

The result? The dismissal during the probationary period was not legally valid and was overturned. The employment contract continued, with the right to wages. The statutory increase was also awarded, moderated to 25%, plus statutory interest. In practice, this can result in wages being owed for a period during which hardly any work was done. The employee did not actually have to work a single day for this: the ruling dates from December 29 and she was due to give birth in January. Maternity leave had probably already started by then. Non-material damages were rejected because it had not been established that she had suffered mental injury.

This ruling is a clear warning to employers: any appeal to financial reasons must be consistent and credible. More importantly, pregnancy must never, even implicitly, play a role in dismissal, not even during the probationary period.

A link to the ruling can be found here.

Do you have questions about the probationary period or the dismissal of an employee? Please contact Dennis Oud, Elke Hofman-Bijvank, or Tessa Sipkema.

We are proud to announce that our colleague, Iris Keemink, was officially sworn in at the Rotterdam District Court on Friday, January 9, and has thus started her career as a lawyer. It was a special and festive moment that she was able to celebrate in the presence of family, friends, and colleagues. After more than a year of gaining valuable experience at our firm with great enthusiasm and dedication, she is now taking this exciting next step.

Within our firm, she will continue to deepen her knowledge of corporate law and civil procedural law, under the guidance of her mentor Lennart Hordijk.

We congratulate Iris on this milestone and look forward to her further development within our team.

Remote working from abroad sounds like an attractive, modern solution to many employers and employees. As long as the work is done well and everyone is satisfied, there seems to be little cause for concern. But there is a legal catch: if you allow this for long enough, it can become a permanent employment condition. The employer can then no longer simply reverse this with a new policy.

This is evident from a recent ruling by the Midden-Nederland District Court.

What happened?

An employee worked for a Dutch employer and moved to Ecuador with his family in 2020. The idea was that he would work partly there and partly in the Netherlands, with annual evaluations. It was explicitly agreed in the arrangement with the employee that if anything changed in the employer's personnel regulations, this would also apply to the employee. Due to COVID-19, the employee stayed in Ecuador longer than planned. From 2022 onwards, he worked mainly from Ecuador. 

In 2023, the employer introduced a new workation policy. Working abroad on a structural basis no longer fitted in with this policy. The employer therefore informed the employee that working from home in Ecuador would be phased out and that he would have to return to work in the Netherlands. The employer argued that working from Ecuador had never been intended as a permanent arrangement and that it did not constitute a condition of employment. Furthermore, the employment contract stated that Zwolle was the place of work and did not include any provisions for working abroad on a permanent basis.

The employee argued that working from home in Ecuador had become an acquired right. The employer had not objected to this for years, thereby giving the employee a legitimate expectation that this would continue to be possible in the future. The employee took the matter to court and won the case.

The court stated that an employment condition does not necessarily have to be agreed upon when concluding an employment contract. An employment condition can also arise as an acquired right from a course of conduct followed after the conclusion of the employment contract. The court also looked primarily at the practical situation. The employee had been working largely from Ecuador for years, with the employer's consent. Moreover, the agreed annual evaluations were not (or hardly) carried out. Another factor was that the employee performed well and had completely organized his family life around living and working in Ecuador. According to the judge, the employee was entitled to assume that the agreements on working from home in Ecuador would continue and that the new policy did not apply to him. Furthermore, the agreements about working from home in Ecuador had been made in mutual consultation and after advice from HR. These agreements were put in writing and added to the employee's personnel file.

According to the court, this was no longer a temporary exception, but a permanent way of working. Working from home in Ecuador had become part of the terms and conditions of employment.

The employer was also unable to successfully invoke the unilateral amendment clause in the employment contract. The judge found that the employer did not have compelling reasons to justify such a radical change. In this case, the interests of the employee outweighed those of the employer.

What does this mean for employers?

This ruling is primarily a wake-up call for employers who generously allow flexible working without clear frameworks. With good agreements, genuine evaluation moments, and clear documentation, you can prevent flexible policies from turning against you.

If you have any questions about your flexible working policy, please contact Dennis Oud, Tessa Sipkema, or Elke Hofman.

It is a subject that lawyers are frequently asked about: the principle of trust. Citizens and businesses often regard a statement made by a civil servant as a commitment to, for example, grant an environmental permit. If an environmental permit is ultimately not granted, this often causes a great deal of incomprehension. After all, hadn't it already been promised that a development or plan could be carried out? Even when the principle of trust is explained, a negative outcome remains difficult for many citizens and businesses to accept.

That feeling of injustice is even more pronounced when the promise is made not by a civil servant, but by the responsible alderman. That was the case in a ruling by the Gelderland District Court on December 30, 2025. In this case, a project developer wanted to build a house on an agricultural plot without a building area. He thought he had come up with a clever construction that would still allow building on the plot. The adjacent plot had an outbuilding that had been used as a home for years. According to the project developer, this use would fall under transitional law. The idea was to demolish the outbuilding and, as it were, transfer the existing residential function to the adjacent plot, where a new home would then be built.

Months of consultation between the project developer and the municipal executive followed. Ultimately, the municipal executive indicated that it did not wish to cooperate with the plan. The project developer disagreed and submitted a permit application for a deviation from the zoning plan. The municipal council refused to issue the necessary declaration of no objection because it did not wish to cooperate with the project developer's plan. Partly because of this refusal by the municipal council, the municipal executive rejected the permit application.

The project developer then lodged an appeal, partly because he believed that the principle of legitimate expectations had been violated. During the exploratory discussions prior to the permit application, aldermen and civil servants had allegedly given positive signals, which had led the project developer to believe that the permit would be granted. The declaration of no objection should therefore not have been refused.

The court ruled that the appeal based on the principle of legitimate expectations was unfounded. In this case, the refusal to issue a statement of no objection was in itself sufficient grounds for not granting the environmental permit. The statement of no objection is a power vested in the municipal council. The municipal council is not bound by any commitments made by an alderman, because the alderman is not part of the municipal council, but of the executive committee. The municipal council therefore did not act contrary to the principle of trust by refusing to issue a statement of no objection, contrary to any commitments made by the alderman. 

What does this mean in practice? Never simply assume that a statement made by a civil servant, or even an alderman, can be attributed to an administrative body. This will prevent you from raising expectations that cannot be fulfilled. 

You can read the ruling here.