EV charging infrastructure in the Netherlands: the legal questions for businesses and property owners

Almost every employer, landlord and fleet operator in the Netherlands now faces the same request: put in charge points. The technology is simple; the legal position is not. Charging touches grid law, property law, lease law, apartment law, energy regulation, employment terms and data protection at once, and the answers differ sharply with where the charge point stands.

Three settings, treated very differently

The first question is never technical: whose land, whose connection, and who uses the electricity? Confusing the three settings below is the commonest cause of a stalled project.

“Semi-public” is the awkward middle: a car park, hotel or retail site that is privately owned but freely accessible. Access, not ownership, triggers the European rules below, so a business that opens its charge points to visitors takes on obligations a purely internal installation does not.

The grid connection: usually the binding constraint

The limit is rarely the number of charge points a business can buy. It is the transport capacity of its connection. In the Brainport region, as in most of the country, large parts of the network are congested and enlarging a connection can take years. Three routes matter.

• Upgrading the connection. The system operator has a duty to connect and to transport, qualified where there is no capacity. Under the Energiewet, which replaced the Elektriciteitswet 1998 and the Gaswet from 1 January 2026, the fixed connection deadline gave way to a “reasonable period” standard, which changes how a delayed connection is challenged.
• Smart charging and load balancing. The practical answer in most cases: capping and shifting charging against the site’s load profile lets an employer serve many vehicles on an existing connection. It is contractual rather than regulatory, but must be documented — who sets priorities, what minimum charge is guaranteed, and who is liable if a car is not charged.
• Flexible transport contracts. System operators offer contracts under which a business accepts limits on its capacity at defined times for a discount or a fee. Several forms sit alongside the ordinary firm connection and transport agreement. The non-firm ATO is available only in congestion areas. The time-block transport right gives full rights within agreed blocks on the regional grids, and the duration-based transport right gives them for a set number of hours a year on TenneT’s high-voltage grid; the ACM introduced both by its code decision of 16 July 2024 (Staatscourant 2024, 23594), in force from 1 April 2025. Within congestion management proper there is the capacity limitation contract, and by its decision of 11 December 2025 (Staatscourant 2025, 42474) the ACM added the capacity control contract, under which a system operator can ask a party with storage or generation to move volume against the direction of the congestion rather than merely to reduce load; it supplements the capacity limitation contract rather than replacing it. The conditions now sit in the Systeemcode elektriciteit 2026, which replaced the Netcode elektriciteit when the ACM adopted new codes under the Energiewet on 5 February 2026. Charging is an attractive candidate because it is flexible, but the obligations bite: an employer that has promised to reduce load cannot then let its fleet charge at will.

Grid connection has its own article on this site. What matters here is sequencing: ask about capacity before buying hardware.

Who owns the charge point?

A charge point bolted into a concrete foundation is not movable equipment. Ownership of land includes what is durably united with it, so the landowner becomes owner of the charge point by operation of law (art. 5:20 BW). This is natrekking, accession, and it happens whatever the contract says about title. In Rechtbank Gelderland 11 May 2023, ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2023:2690, an energy tax case about publicly accessible charge points operated under municipal concessions, the court proceeded on the basis that the charge points had become the municipalities’ property by accession, because they were durably united with the ground and no right of superficies had been granted.

The solution is a right of superficies, opstalrecht (art. 5:101 BW): a registered real right separating ownership of the installation from ownership of the land. Where a third-party operator, a lease company or an employer installs on another’s land and wants to keep title, remove the asset or finance it, this is the instrument. It requires a notarial deed and registration, and should deal with duration, compensation, access, maintenance and sale of the land.The same problem arises for solar panels on a leased roof.

Charge points at leased business premises

Installing a charge point alters the leased property and normally requires the landlord’s consent (art. 7:215 BW). The tenant generally has a right to remove what it added and must return the property in the agreed condition (art. 7:216 BW and art. 7:224 BW). All three sit in the part of Book 7 dealing with the tenant’s obligations, which applies to business premises as well as to homes, but only in residential lettings is art. 7:215 BW mandatory in the tenant’s favour. The ROZ models used in almost every Dutch commercial lease restrict alterations and impose a restoration obligation, so the statutory position is a negotiating position, not the outcome.

Settle in writing, and in the consent itself:

• Who pays — capital cost, installation, connection upgrade and maintenance, and whether any of it passes through the service charge to tenants who do not charge.
• Ownership and removal — a right of superficies if the tenant or its supplier is to keep title; otherwise an express agreement that the installation stays, and its value.
• Capacity allocation in a multi-tenant building, where the first tenant to install consumes the headroom the others need.
• The electricity — separately metered, billed at cost, or recovered through the service charge, and whether the landlord passes on more than cost.

Apartment buildings and the VvE

Where the car park is a common part of a building divided into apartment rights, an individual owner cannot simply install. The common parts are managed by the association (art. 5:126 BW), so an alteration to them needs a decision of the meeting of owners under the deed of subdivision and the regulations. Where the consent of the association, its organs or other owners is withheld without reasonable ground, or the party who must give it does not respond, the owner who needs it can ask the subdistrict court to replace that consent with an authorisation (art. 5:121 BW). Where a space is to be given exclusive use or the layout changes materially, an amendment of the deed of subdivision may be needed, which is heavier again.

Two developments matter. In buildings using the 2017 model regulations, notification to the association may already be enough, subject to conditions. And a bill amending Book 5 of the Civil Code would introduce a general notification regime, so an owner meeting prescribed conditions need only notify rather than obtain consent, with the detail left to an order in council. The bill has been through internet consultation but had not been enacted when this article was written, and the order in council that is to set the conditions has not been published; check the parliamentary papers before relying on it.Until then the association’s decision remains necessary, and associations should settle what the regime will not answer: metering and billing, insurance, fire safety, and who pays to reinforce the building’s connection.

The charging service: three different parties

Businesses regularly conflate three roles: the charge point operator (CPO), which owns or operates the hardware and sells access; the e-mobility service provider (eMSP), which issues the charge card or app and bills the driver, often across other networks through roaming; and the electricity supplier, supplying the connection behind the charge point.

Whether reselling electricity at a charge point requires a supply licence is the question businesses actually ask. A licence is required to supply energy to end users with a small connection (art. 2.17 Energiewet), and the ACM publishes a closed list of exceptions, including supply to a single property you own via one connection, supply to large consumers, and acting as a reseller with a licensed supplier.

The orthodox analysis is that the operator is itself the end user behind its own connection and sells a charging service, not electricity over a connection, so no licence is needed. It becomes uncomfortable where a business lets others draw from its connection and bills them: a landlord recharging tenants, an association its residents, or neighbours sharing one installation. The ACM has published no guidance addressed specifically to charge points under the Energiewet; what it publishes is the list of exceptions itself, which also covers supply to small connections of municipalities for their public tasks and supply by a not-for-profit energy community to its members. Where there is doubt, contract through a licensed supplier or a CPO rather than becoming one.

Public charging, concessions and municipal tenders

Public charging in the Netherlands is largely a regulated market created by contract. Municipalities and regional partnerships award concessions for placing and operating charge points in the public space, usually long-term and often collectively across dozens of municipalities. A company bidding for one is bidding for a public contract: procurement law applies, award criteria are challengeable, and disappointed bidders litigate.

Check before bidding: who owns the charge points during and after the term, and whether a right of superficies is granted or accession allowed to operate; the fee payable to the municipality, often per kWh charged; the placement process, including the traffic decision reserving the bay; uptime and service levels; tariff caps; and hand-back.

Consumer and pricing transparency at public charge points

Regulation (EU) 2023/1804 on alternative fuels infrastructure (AFIR) applies since 13 April 2024 and is directly effective. Its user-facing obligations sit in art. 5 AFIR:

• Ad hoc charging — users must be able to charge without a contract with the operator or a service provider.
• Payment — publicly accessible points of at least 50 kW must accept electronic payment through a card reader or contactless device. Points already in service before that requirement applied are not exempt indefinitely: art. 5 AFIR obliges operators to fit contactless payment to existing publicly accessible points of at least 50 kW by 1 January 2027, whether by a card terminal or by payment through a QR code.
• Price transparency — ad hoc prices must be reasonable, transparent and non-discriminatory, given before the session starts, and based on the price per kWh at points of at least 50 kW, with any occupancy element shown separately.
• Service providers — an eMSP must give the driver all price components for the session, including roaming, in advance.

Ordinary Dutch consumer law applies alongside. AFIR works directly, without Dutch implementing legislation, and supervision of the transparency of ad hoc prices and of contract terms rests with the ACM and the RDW.

The employment angle: charging at home for a company car

This is where employers are most exposed and least prepared. Where an employee has an electric company car, the electricity used at home is a cost of the employer’s car, advanced by the employee. Reimbursement is therefore generally treated as reimbursement of intermediary costs and untaxed — but only if it matches the employee’s actual cost. In a published position the Belastingdienst knowledge group rejected a flat national average price, because the spread between employees is too wide (KG:204:2024:13). An earlier position addresses reclaiming the charge point itself and using a right of superficies to keep title (KG:204:2022:5). High-level tax points only, not tax advice.

The employment points are separate, and belong in the car scheme or the contract:

• Who owns, insures and maintains the charge point at the employee’s home, and what happens when the employee leaves, moves or changes car.
• How consumption is measured and reimbursed, and what evidence of the tariff the employee must supply.
• Whether the employer may recover installation or removal costs on termination — a wage deduction question needing an express basis.
• Private use for a second vehicle, and charge cards on exit. Unilateral change is difficult: a reimbursement practice running for years can become a term of employment.

Data protection at charge points

A charging session is not anonymous. Charge cards, RFID tags, app accounts and roaming records tie a session to a person, a time and a place, so the GDPR applies and the operator, the service provider and the employer each need to know which of them is controller. Charging data reveals where an employee was and when: using it beyond cost allocation needs a lawful basis under art. 6 GDPR, a notice and, where it amounts to monitoring, the works council’s involvement. Keep retention to what billing requires.

Safety, building rules and permits

Charge points are governed by the Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving (Bbl) under the Omgevingswet. The Bbl implements the charging obligations of the revised EPBD, and the 2026 amendments raised them. For new build and major renovation of a non-residential building with more than five parking spaces the requirement is now at least one charge point for every five spaces — one for every two in a building with an office function — pre-cabling for at least half the spaces and ducting for the rest (art. 4.160b Bbl). Existing non-residential buildings with more than twenty parking spaces have needed at least one charge point since 1 January 2025; from 1 January 2027 they need one charge point for every ten spaces or ducting for half of them, and publicly owned buildings face a further pre-cabling requirement from 1 January 2033.

Enclosed car parks deserve separate attention. There is no general prohibition on charging in one, but the building must meet the Bbl performance requirements, the installation must comply with the applicable standards, and the authority can impose bespoke requirements. Insurers and fire services expect siting near the entrance or under ventilation, a central emergency switch, signage showing where charging takes place, and confirmation that the building’s insurance still responds. For charge points in an underground car park beneath a building with a sleeping function the Bbl goes further, requiring mode 3 or mode 4 charging, a central cut-off switch coupled to the fire alarm installation, and heavier sprinkler and ventilation provision. Whether a permit is needed turns on the site rather than on the hardware: the technical building activity is often permit-free, but the omgevingsplan can make the placing of a charge point an activity for which a permit is required, and a departure from the plan takes considerably longer. Check the omgevingsplan of the municipality concerned through the Omgevingsloket before ordering hardware.

Checklist for an employer rolling out charging at its site

• Confirm available capacity with the system operator before committing to hardware, and price the alternatives: upgrade, smart charging, or a flexible transport contract.
• If you lease, obtain the landlord’s written consent, with cost, ownership and removal settled, and grant a right of superficies if title is to sit anywhere but with the landowner.
• Decide whether the charge points will be open to visitors; if so, assume AFIR applies.
• Settle the billing model, and take advice before recharging electricity to a third party.
• Check the Bbl obligations, and fire safety if the car park is enclosed.
• Write the rules into the car scheme: eligibility, home charging, reimbursement, charge cards, exit.
• Put a data protection notice and processing terms in place with the operator and service provider, and agree service levels, warranties and an exit route.