Employment discrimination in the Netherlands: the legal framework

Dutch law does not have one anti-discrimination statute for the workplace. It has a constitutional provision, five equal treatment acts, three articles in the Civil Code and one in the Criminal Code, each covering different grounds and each with its own exceptions. This page sets out which rule applies to which ground, who has to prove what, where a complaint goes, and which deadlines end a claim.

One point first, because it is the most common misunderstanding. There is no administrative fine for workplace discrimination in the Netherlands, and the Netherlands Labour Authority (Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie) does not impose one for the discrimination itself. What the Inspectorate can enforce is the separate duty under working conditions law to pursue a policy against psychosocial workload, of which discrimination forms part; that is a duty to have and apply a policy, not a sanction for an individual decision. The discrimination itself is enforced by the employee, through the courts, with the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (College voor de Rechten van de Mens) as a free intermediate step.

Which law applies to which ground

Article 1 of the Constitution states the principle: equal cases are to be treated equally, and discrimination on any ground whatsoever is not permitted. It binds the legislature rather than the individual employer, and in an employment dispute you rely on the acts that work it out.

The grounds are closed lists. That matters in practice: a refusal based on something that is not on any list, such as a hobby, a postcode or a personality test result, is not discrimination in the legal sense, however unfair it feels. It may still be a breach of the employer’s duty to act as a good employer, which is a separate route.

The acts cover the whole working relationship. Recruitment and the job advertisement, the offer, terms of employment and pay, training, promotion, the way work is allocated, and termination all fall within their scope. They also cover people who are not employees in the strict sense, including applicants, agency workers and, for several grounds, the self-employed working under a contract for services.

Direct and indirect discrimination

Direct discrimination is a distinction made because of the protected ground itself: not hiring someone because she is pregnant, or setting a maximum age for a vacancy. Direct discrimination cannot be justified by a business argument. It is permitted only where the statute itself allows it, for example a genuine occupational requirement, a measure of positive action, or one of the specific exceptions the Age Discrimination Act makes for state pension age and for employment policy objectives.

Indirect discrimination is a neutral rule that disadvantages one group disproportionately: a requirement of flawless Dutch for a job that does not need it, a shift pattern that in practice excludes part-timers, a rule that only full-time employees qualify for a bonus. Indirect discrimination is permitted if it is objectively justified: the aim must be legitimate, and the means must be appropriate and necessary. Necessary is the part employers usually fail. If the aim can be achieved in a way that disadvantages fewer people, the rule does not survive.

Harassment counts as discrimination

Where unwanted conduct is connected to a protected ground and has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment, the equal treatment acts treat it as a form of discrimination. Conduct that is not tied to a protected ground is dealt with under working conditions law and the duty of good employership instead. We cover the practical side of that in our guide on harassment and inappropriate conduct at work.

Pregnancy, childbirth and maternity

A distinction made because of pregnancy, childbirth or maternity is direct discrimination on grounds of sex. There is no justification for it, and no business argument that saves it. This applies to the decision not to hire, to the decision not to extend a fixed-term contract, to the allocation of work on return, and to selection for redundancy.

Two rules sit alongside it. Article 7:670 of the Civil Code prohibits termination during pregnancy and during maternity leave, and for six weeks after the employee has resumed work following that leave. And where a fixed-term contract simply expires, there is no dismissal to challenge, but the decision not to renew can still be discrimination, and the employee can claim compensation on that basis.

Notification is where the evidence usually is. The moment the employer learned of the pregnancy, and what changed after that moment, is the pattern a court looks for.

Disability, chronic illness and reasonable accommodation

The Equal Treatment (Disability or Chronic Illness) Act does more than prohibit a distinction. It obliges the employer to make effective accommodations (doeltreffende aanpassingen) where an employee or an applicant needs them in order to work, unless the accommodation would impose a disproportionate burden. Failing to make an accommodation that is required is itself a prohibited distinction, not a separate and lesser omission.

What counts as an accommodation is assessed case by case and is often modest: adjusted hours or a different shift pattern, screen-reading software, an adapted workstation, a phased return after illness, a change in how tasks are allocated within a team. Where the employee is on long-term sick leave, the accommodation duty runs alongside the statutory reintegration obligations, which we set out in our guide on the reintegration plan. Whether the burden is disproportionate depends on the size and resources of the employer, the cost of the measure and whether financial support is available for it. A small employer is not held to the standard of a large one, but cost on its own rarely decides the question.

Two practical points follow. The duty is triggered by a request, so the employee has to ask, and the request is best made in writing so that the date is fixed. And the employer must respond substantively: an accommodation refused without any assessment of its feasibility and cost is close to indefensible once the burden of proof shifts, because there is nothing on the file to justify the refusal.

Recruitment and selection: what the law requires today

A job advertisement may not express a preference that excludes candidates on a protected ground, and the selection process must not do indirectly what the advertisement may not do directly. That much has been settled law for decades.

What does not exist, contrary to what is often written, is a general statutory duty to have a documented, objective recruitment procedure, to run bias audits, or to give annual diversity training. The bill that would have introduced supervised recruitment procedures, the Equal Opportunities in Recruitment and Selection (Supervision) Bill, was rejected by the Senate on 26 March 2024. A revised private member’s bill has since been introduced, and the Council of State published its advice on it on 4 May 2026, questioning the necessity of the scheme, the clarity of the standard it would impose and the supervisory role it assigns to the Netherlands Labour Authority. The bill has not been adopted. Until it is, none of those duties is enforceable.

That is not a reason to skip them. It is the employer who has to disprove a presumption of discrimination once the applicant has raised one, and an employer with no record of the criteria, the assessments and the reasons has nothing to disprove it with. Documentation is not a compliance obligation here; it is your evidence.

Algorithms and AI in hiring

Selection software is already regulated, through two separate regimes.

• The GDPR applies now. A decision with legal or similarly significant effects that is based solely on automated processing is permitted only in limited cases, and the candidate has rights to information about the logic involved and to human intervention. A fully automated rejection is exactly the kind of decision the rule was written for.
• The AI Act classifies systems used for recruitment, selection, promotion and termination as high-risk under Annex III. The main obligations that attach to high-risk systems, including risk management, data governance, logging and human oversight, were postponed by the Digital Omnibus regulation and now apply from 2 December 2027. The transparency obligations of article 50, which require people to be told when they are interacting with an AI system, have applied since 2 August 2026, as have the prohibitions on unacceptable practices.

The practical consequence for employers is that buying the tool does not move the risk. If a vendor’s model filters out applicants in a way that correlates with a protected ground, it is the employer who made the distinction.

Equal pay and pay transparency

Equal pay for equal or equivalent work already follows from the equal treatment acts, and it is enforceable today. What is changing is the transparency around it.

Directive (EU) 2023/970 had to be transposed by 7 June 2026. The Netherlands did not meet that date. The implementing bill, which amends the Equal Treatment of Men and Women Act, was submitted to the House of Representatives in May 2026 and is still in the written preparation stage there. It provides for entry into force on a date to be set by royal decree, and different provisions may be brought into force at different moments, so no date can yet be relied on. In the meantime the position is this: a directive has no horizontal direct effect, so an employee cannot invoke it directly against a private employer, and the reporting duties in particular need national rules before they bite. Dutch courts must interpret existing Dutch law in line with the directive, which sharpens the equal pay standard that already applies. Employees of public authorities are in a different position and can rely on provisions that are sufficiently clear and unconditional.

We set out the substance of the new regime, including the pay gap reporting thresholds and the ban on asking applicants about their current salary, on our page about salary transparency legislation.

Who has to prove what

This is the rule that decides most cases, and it is regularly stated wrongly in both directions.

The burden is shared, in two steps. First, the employee or applicant must put forward facts that give rise to a presumption of discrimination. Not proof; facts. Then, and only then, the burden shifts: the employer must prove that it did not discriminate. If the employer cannot, the claim succeeds.

What has been accepted as facts giving rise to a presumption includes a job advertisement with an age or language requirement that is not needed for the role, a rejection that follows shortly after the employer learns of a pregnancy, statistics showing that candidates of one origin never get past the first round, a remark made in the interview, and a pay difference with a colleague doing equivalent work that the employer cannot explain by anything else.

What is not enough on its own is the applicant’s own belief that the real reason was discrimination, or the bare fact of belonging to a protected group combined with a rejection.

Protection against retaliation

An employee who raises a discrimination complaint, supports someone else’s complaint or brings proceedings is protected against being disadvantaged for having done so. Article 7:647 of the Civil Code prohibits the employer from disadvantaging an employee for invoking the equal treatment rules on grounds of sex, and a notice of termination given in breach of that prohibition can be annulled by the employee. Comparable victimisation provisions apply to the other grounds under the equal treatment acts and, for working hours and contract type, under articles 7:648 and 7:649 of the Civil Code.

The protection does not depend on the underlying complaint succeeding, provided it was made in good faith. That is the point of it: a right that costs the person exercising it their position is not a right. Evidentially, a retaliation claim follows the same two-step pattern as the discrimination claim itself, and the sequence of events usually does the work, in particular anything that changed immediately after the complaint was made.

For an employer this is a procedural problem rather than a legal one. Once a complaint has been made, decisions affecting the complainant need to be documented against criteria that already existed before it, and should where possible be taken by someone other than the person complained about.

Where a complaint goes

There is no employment tribunal in the Netherlands separate from the ordinary courts, and no employee ombudsman. The routes that do exist are these.

• Internally. The manager or HR, the confidential adviser if the employer has one, and the complaints procedure. The works council has a role in the policy, not in the individual case.
• The municipal anti-discrimination service. Every municipality must provide one. It is free, it gives independent advice, and it can help register and formulate the complaint.
• The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights. Anyone can bring a case, without a lawyer and without cost. The Institute investigates and issues a reasoned opinion on whether the equal treatment legislation has been breached. Two limits matter: the opinion is not binding, and the Institute cannot award damages or set aside a dismissal. Its weight is evidential. Employers follow the opinion in a majority of cases, and a court takes it seriously.
• The subdistrict court. This is the route for anything that requires a binding order: annulment of a dismissal, compensation, fair compensation, back pay.
• A criminal complaint. For the more serious cases, discrimination in the exercise of an office, profession or business is an offence under article 429quater of the Criminal Code. In practice this route is used rarely and alongside, not instead of, the civil claim.

Deadlines

The short deadlines are in dismissal law, and they are strict.

• To ask the court to annul the notice, or to award fair compensation instead, the application must be made within two months of the end of the employment contract.
• A claim for the transition payment must be made within three months of the end of the contract.
• A claim for damages that does not depend on challenging the dismissal follows the general limitation rules, which run from the moment the claimant knows of the damage and of the liable party. Where the timing is close, have it checked rather than assumed.

The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights does not apply a fixed deadline, but bringing a case there does not stop the two-month clock in dismissal cases. If both routes matter, the court application comes first.

What a court can order

• The discriminatory provision or decision is void. A clause in a contract or a scheme that breaches the equal treatment legislation has no effect.
• The dismissal can be annulled, so that the employment continues, or the court can award fair compensation instead.
• Damages, including compensation for non-material loss where dignity has been affected.
• Back pay, where a pay difference cannot be objectively justified.

What a court cannot do is impose a fine measured as a percentage of turnover. That figure comes from competition and data protection law and has no counterpart in Dutch equal treatment law. The real exposure for an employer is compensation, back pay across a group of employees where a pay or benefits scheme turns out to be discriminatory, legal costs, and the publicity of a published opinion or judgment.

For employers: what reduces the risk

Given how the burden of proof works, the measures that help are the ones that produce a record.

• Write down the requirements for a role before you see the candidates, and keep the list that was used.
• Record who applied, who was assessed, against which criteria, and why the choice fell where it did. Two lines per candidate is enough.
• Check the tools. Ask a supplier what data its model was trained on and what it optimises for, and keep the answer.
• Explain pay differences in writing at the moment they arise, not two years later when they are questioned.
• Have a complaints procedure and a confidential adviser, and make sure a complaint reaches someone who is not the person complained about.
• Treat a pregnancy notification, a request for adjustments on health grounds and a contract renewal decision as moments where the file needs to be right.

Frequently asked questions

Facing a discrimination question at work?

Whether you are an employee who has been passed over, paid less or dismissed, or an employer who has received a complaint or a summons from the Institute, the first question is the same: what does the file show, and what does the other side have to prove. Our employment lawyers advise both sides, in Dutch and in English. Get in touch with Law & More for a confidential assessment of where you stand.