On 1 January 2022, the Dutch Foreigners (Employment) Act was slightly amended. Curious about what has changed compared to the old legislation? Bart Maes explains it in a short summary.

The most important change is actually that work permits can be issued for three years again instead of for one year. That seems quite much, but the underlying test against the ‘priority supply’ has remained unchanged, which continues to be the bottleneck of our laws and regulations in that regard. It would be much better to replace the generic and much too vague test against the priority supply with an arrangement that makes recruiting people from outside the European Union (and the European Economic Area and Switzerland, i.e. the ‘EU’, ‘EEA’ and ‘Switzerland’; please note: the United Kingdom is no longer part of this since the Brexit!) possible for professions and/or sectors that experience considerable shortages at any point in time (presently healthcare, for example). Naturally, you may still attach certain requirements to this, but at least you are focusing on foreign nationals (instead of EU, EEA, or Swiss foreign nationals - also referred to as third-country nationals in legal jargon - because those groups are allowed to work in the Netherlands without any prior consent), who we truly need. That is why our current legislation with a generic and much too vague (and therefore legally uncertain) ‘test against the priority supply’ is not sufficient. This is a nice opportunity for our new...

Read Full Story: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=72e37e53-4251-428c-abc4-601e2c...