The recent changes in Dutch Labour Law

Resumo

This contribution deals with some of the changes in Labour and Social security Law in the Netherlands that will take effect in stages from January 1st 2015 onwards.

The Act on Employment and Security aims at recreating a balance between rights and risks of flexible and permanent employment. Flexible employment must be made more secure, permanent employment should be made less inflexible, and social security must become more demanding within the framework of a mutual responsibility of state, employer and (ex)employee. The present contribution focuses on these three aspects in turn and tries to shed some light on the choices made.  It seems that some of the choices are inspired by EU guidelines on economic and employment policy, and it will be interesting to see just how much they might change the fabric of national social law.