Unemployment benefit after a PIP in the Netherlands: the WW

Most Dutch cases end in a settlement, so this page is about the settlement

The employer cannot end a permanent contract alone; it needs the UWV or the subdistrict court. That is why most Dutch performance cases end in a vaststellingsovereenkomst — a settlement agreement — and why the unemployment benefit, the WW-uitkering, is mostly a question about what that document says.

The general condition first: to draw the WW you need to have worked 26 of the last 36 weeks. After that, for a settlement, the safety rules are precise, and a missed one costs months of income rather than a fraction of it.

If you are hoping to pass the plan — and here, uniquely, the law makes that path real — this page is for the day an agreement appears. It tends to appear suddenly.

Three things the agreement has to say

• The initiative lies with the employer. Practitioners put that sentence into the agreement literally. An agreement drafted on your initiative reads as a resignation, and the WW dies in the drafting.
• The reason is neutral and non-culpable. The standard formula is a difference of views on how the role should be performed. Culpable wording — anything that reads as your fault — costs the benefit the same way.
• The end date respects the fictieve opzegtermijn. The end date must sit at least a full notional notice period after signing, counted in whole months, according to your tenure or your collective agreement. An end date set earlier creates months with no salary and no WW. The worked example from practice: eleven years' service, three months' notice, an agreement signed on 25 January, earliest safe end date 1 May.

Twenty-six weeks in thirty-six, and what builds the duration

The agreement decides whether the WW is refused. What it is worth, and for how long, is decided by the Werkloosheidswet and by your own history, and the page has not said what those rules are.

The weeks test comes first. Article 17 of the Werkloosheidswet requires that in the 36 calendar weeks immediately before your first day of unemployment you worked at least one hour in at least 26 of them. Article 17a takes weeks out of that window rather than counting them against you: weeks lost to illness or incapacity, unpaid leave up to a maximum of 78 weeks, and defined benefit periods. An illness during a verbetertraject therefore does not quietly eat the qualifying window, which is worth knowing because the illness and the plan often arrive together.

Pass the weeks test and you have three months. Article 42 sets the floor at three months and the ceiling at twenty-four.

Past three months, the years test decides the rest. You have to show that in four of the last five calendar years you were paid for 208 or more hours in each — 52 or more days per year for periods before 2013. Then the build is:

• one month of benefit for each calendar year of employment history, for the first ten years
• beyond ten years, half a month for each calendar year falling after 2015, and a whole month for each calendar year falling before 2016

Halves are added together and a half month counts as fifteen calendar days. The split at 2016 is the 2015 reform showing through, and it means two people with identical service can have quite different entitlements depending on when that service was.

The amount is 75% of your reference wage for the first two months and 70% from the third, before any offset for income you earn while claiming. Article 47 states it as a formula rather than a percentage because of that offset and because the daily wage it works from is capped.

Two practical consequences for a settlement negotiation. The end date in a vaststellingsovereenkomst can move you across a calendar-year boundary, which is worth a month of benefit under the build above. And the first two months pay more than the rest, so the gap between the end date and the start of the next job is worth arranging deliberately rather than by default.

Culpably unemployed, in the statute's own words

The page has used the phrase and it is worth reading where it comes from, because the second limb is the one a settlement has to get past. Article 24(2) says a worker has become culpably unemployed where:

• an urgent cause within the meaning of article 7:678 of the Civil Code underlies the unemployment and the worker can be blamed for it — summary dismissal territory, and not a performance case; or
• the employment was ended by or at the request of the worker, without continuing it being so demanding that it could not reasonably have been required of them.

That second limb is the whole reason the three things the agreement has to say are the three things it has to say. A vaststellingsovereenkomst that reads as the employer's initiative, states a neutral reason, and respects the notional notice period is a document that answers limb (b) on its face. One that reads as your request does not, however it is titled.

One more rule worth knowing if the claim has slipped: article 35 says benefit is not paid for periods more than 26 weeks before the day you applied, with a discretion to depart in special cases. So a forgotten claim has a floor rather than being open-ended, and the answer is still to claim at once.

The transition payment is separate, and it is a floor

The transitievergoeding — one third of a gross monthly salary per year of service from the first day, capped at €102,000 for 2026 or twelve months' salary where that is higher — is legally separate from the WW and does not reduce it. It is the floor of any deal and not the deal; a thin improvement file is the multiplier above it. For the benefit the point is narrower: the money and the WW are two different questions, and a good number does not make a bad end date safe.

How long do I have to undo a signed agreement?

After signing you have fourteen days to revoke the agreement without giving any reason — twenty-one if the agreement fails to mention the right. It is one of two undo buttons in this guide — France's rupture conventionnelle carries the other — and it exists for exactly the case where the three things above were signed in a meeting and checked afterwards.

It expires hard. After it, a bad end date is final. Get the agreement checked inside the window, not after it.

Never sign while sick

Practitioners treat illness as triggering dismissal protection, and signing that protection away as jeopardising both the WW and sickness benefit. That is the practitioner standard rather than statute read directly, so check it with an adviser before relying on the detail — and take the safe reading, which is the simple one. If you are sick, do not sign.

A Dutch settlement is a safe ending if it is drafted right

Compared with Germany, where a mutual termination is presumed to cost twelve weeks of benefit unless it sits inside a narrow corridor, the Dutch agreement is a safe ending provided it says the right things. The trap here is the drafting, not the instrument.

Disengaging is the wrong move here specifically

Disengaging from a plan costs the record and the negotiating position anywhere. In the Netherlands it costs more, because the improvement track is a legal precondition of dismissal and the courts weigh your effort and your openness to criticism among the factors. A documented good-faith effort feeds both endings: the pass, and the settlement whose number rests on how thin the employer's file is.

January, your collective agreement, and the sickness rules

Fairhanded is not a law firm. The transition payment cap changes every January, notice periods depend on your collective agreement, and the sickness rules have specifics this page does not carry. Before signing a vaststellingsovereenkomst, take it to a Dutch employment lawyer — and if you already have signed, do it inside the fourteen days.