If you’re a busi­ness hir­ing an inde­pend­ent con­tract­or from abroad to tem­por­ar­ily work for your com­pany in the Neth­er­lands, they must register at the report­ing desk for pos­ted work­ers. This report­ing require­ment is part of the Terms of Employ­ment Pos­ted Work­ers in the European Uni­on Act (Wag­wEU) As the cli­ent, you must veri­fy wheth­er the inde­pend­ent con­tract­or has registered (cor­rectly).

What does the Wag­wEU report­ing require­ment entail?
Many busi­nesses are famil­i­ar with the report­ing require­ment for pos­ted work­ers. How­ever, cer­tain cat­egor­ies of inde­pend­ent con­tract­ors also have a (lim­ited) report­ing oblig­a­tion. The pur­pose of this require­ment is to ensure that inde­pend­ent con­tract­ors work under safe, healthy, and fair con­di­tions in the Neth­er­lands. This ensures com­pli­ance with the cor­rect Dutch employ­ment con­di­tions and com­bats unfair com­pet­i­tion.

If an inde­pend­ent con­tract­or comes from one of the EU coun­tries, Nor­way, Ice­land, Liecht­en­stein, or Switzer­land to carry out a tem­por­ary assign­ment for a Dutch cli­ent, with or without an inter­me­di­ary, they must, in prin­ciple, report before start­ing the assign­ment. This oblig­a­tion only applies to inde­pend­ent con­tract­ors work­ing in cer­tain sec­tors: con­struc­tion, clean­ing, food industry, met­al, health­care, win­dow clean­ing, or agri­cul­ture and hor­ti­cul­ture. If an inde­pend­ent con­tract­or hires anoth­er for­eign com­pany to carry out the assign­ment in the Neth­er­lands, then the inde­pend­ent con­tract­or is the cli­ent and is respons­ible for check­ing the required regis­tra­tion, not the Dutch com­pany.

In some cases, an annu­al report may be suf­fi­cient. The inde­pend­ent con­tract­or can opt for this if they:

• Work in a sec­tor sub­ject to the report­ing require­ment;
• Are loc­ated with­in 100 km of the Dutch bor­der;
• Have car­ried out at least three assign­ments in the Neth­er­lands in the pre­vi­ous cal­en­dar year or made a val­id report in the year before; and
• Are registered in the trade register, or a com­par­able register in a neigh­bor­ing coun­try.

Fail­ure to com­ply with the man­dat­ory regis­tra­tion can res­ult in a fine from the Labour Inspec­tion for both the inde­pend­ent con­tract­or and the Dutch cli­ent. The cli­ent must ensure the report is cor­rectly made.

When hir­ing inde­pend­ent con­tract­ors from abroad, Dutch cli­ents should be aware of the report­ing require­ment. Should you have any ques­tions regard­ing this mat­ter, please do not hes­it­ate to reach out to us!

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