On a PIP in the Netherlands: can they actually dismiss me?

The employer has to win a case first

Dutch law runs a closed list of dismissal grounds behind a preventive gate. An employer cannot end a permanent contract on its own: it needs permission from the UWV, for economic or illness grounds, or a dissolution order from the subdistrict court for personal grounds. Performance is the d-ground: disfunctioneren.

The structural consequence is unusual and it runs in your favour. Everywhere else in this guide the employer acts and you challenge afterwards. Here they have to persuade someone first, which means time is on your side by design.

The gate has one hole, and it is small: a valid probationary period, during which either side can end the contract without it. The maxima run from the start of the contract, so at a few months' tenure it has usually expired, and a clause that breaks the statutory rules is void rather than merely unenforceable.

The verbetertraject is a precondition, not a courtesy

Case law since the 2015 reform makes a genuine opportunity to improve a condition of dismissal. The court-tested checklist is specific, and every missing element is leverage:

• Unsuitability shown against your actual job description.
• You were told timely and clearly that performance was falling short — and warned at the start that failure means transfer or dismissal. "We gave you chances", announced only afterwards, fails.
• A real improvement track: a written plan, concrete and objectively measurable improvement points, documented interim evaluations, and training or support where needed. Typically three to six months, though no statutory minimum exists.
• The underperformance was not caused by the employer neglecting training or working conditions, and not caused by illness.
• Herplaatsing: redeployment into a suitable vacancy has to be examined before dismissal.

The Hoge Raad's Ecofys factors calibrate how much help is owed — length of employment, how long the underperformance has run since you were told, the nature of the shortcomings and of the role, your openness to criticism and effort to improve, and the size of the company.

Where the file is thin, courts refuse dissolution, or grant it only on the cumulation i-ground with up to half the transition payment added on top as a judicial discretion. A track that was fake or predetermined can ground an additional billijke vergoeding for seriously culpable employer conduct.

Dutch practitioners name the game openly. They describe improvement tracks used for dossieropbouw — building the dismissal file. Keeping your own record is not a metaphor here; it is the recognised counter-move, in the local vocabulary.

On duration, employer-side counsel typically advise at least three months. That is their own standard rather than a rule, and its usefulness is comparative: a track materially shorter than what the other side's advisers recommend is a point you can make in the employer's own terms.

The money starts at a floor

The transitievergoeding accrues from your first day of employment: one third of a gross monthly salary per year of service, pro rata, capped at €102,000 or twelve months' salary where that is higher. The cap is re-indexed every January. It is legally separate from unemployment benefit and does not reduce it.

In a negotiation the transition payment is the floor, not the deal. What sits above it is the strength of the employer's d-ground file — a track missing elements is the multiplier. Practitioner framing is explicit about that.

The settlement agreement, and the undo button

Most Dutch cases end in a vaststellingsovereenkomst. Its safety rules are precise and getting them wrong costs months of income:

• The initiative must lie with the employer, and practitioners put that sentence into the agreement literally.
• The reason must be neutral and non-culpable. The standard formula is a difference of view about how the role should be performed.
• The end date must respect the fictieve opzegtermijn — it has to sit at least a full notional notice period after signing, counted in whole months. An end date set too early creates months with no salary and no benefit. A worked example from practice: eleven years' service, three months' notice, signed 25 January, earliest safe end date 1 May.

Beyond that: check the transition payment floor is met, that holiday days and holiday pay are settled, garden leave is paid, any non-compete is softened or dropped, and the final discharge clause is scoped.

You have fourteen days to revoke after signing, without giving a reason — twenty-one if the agreement failed to mention that right. This is one of three places in this guide where a signature comes with a legal undo button; France's rupture conventionnelle is another, and so is a United States release of age claims signed at 40 or over. It expires hard: after it, a bad deal is final. The deadlines page has it beside the clocks that run the other way.

Never sign while sick. Illness triggers dismissal protection, and signing that away jeopardises both unemployment and sickness benefit. The benefit page has the qualifying weeks, the end-date arithmetic and the comparison with Germany.

If it has already ended, two clocks start

Because a Dutch employer cannot end a permanent contract on its own, there is no general deadline here to challenge a dismissal the way Germany and Spain have one. The deadlines that do exist apply once the contract has actually ended, and there are two.

Two months to ask the court to undo or price an ending the employer was not entitled to make on its own, and three months to claim the transition payment if it was not paid. Both run from the day after the contract ended, under article 7:686a of the civil code. Whether anything can pause them is the question a Dutch employment lawyer answers in a first meeting, and the file behind this page marks it to verify — so write the end date down and treat both as hard. The deadlines page puts them beside every other clock the guide covers.

On a kennismigrant permit a third clock starts from the same date: three months from the day the contract ends, longer where the permit has been held two years, and capped by the permit's own expiry. What a highly skilled migrant permit does when a plan ends has what that two-year condition does not say, and why the end date you negotiate is doing two jobs at once.

The cap moves every January, and dates are unforgiving

Fairhanded is not a law firm. The transition payment cap changes every January and settlement mechanics are unforgiving about dates. Where your situation turns on a legal question — and certainly before signing a vaststellingsovereenkomst — take it to a Dutch employment lawyer. The fourteen-day window exists precisely so that signing first and asking afterwards is recoverable, but only once.