Posted workers to and from the Netherlands; Facts and figures

Results
The Netherlands is an important receiving Member State for intra-EU posting. In 2023, nearly 200,000 A1 certificates were issued for the Netherlands, mainly by our neighbouring countries Germany and Belgium, and additionally by Poland. These certificates are estimated to relate to approximately 121,000 unique individuals. In addition, around 102,000 workers were reported through the Dutch prior notification tool in 2023, of whom more than 90 percent were employees and the remainder self-employed. These workers were notified through roughly 80,000 notifications submitted by about 14,000 service providers (both foreign employers and self-employed persons).

Most notified employees are posted from Germany and Belgium (together 35 percent), Poland (22 percent), and Lithuania (14 percent), primarily to the construction and manufacturing sectors (each 28 percent), followed by transport and logistics (15 percent) and agriculture and horticulture (8 percent). For notified self-employed workers, this mainly concerns postings from Poland, Slovakia, and Belgium to the construction and manufacturing sectors. Posting represents only a small share of the labour market – just over 1 percent – especially compared to the much larger share of regular labour migrants. Since 2022, road transport has formed a major blind spot in the data: postings in this sector are no longer registered through the Dutch notification tool but via the European RTPD portal, which means recent Dutch figures are missing.

The share of third-country nationals (TCNs) from outside the EEA+ is growing and now accounts for more than one-fifth of all notified employees. These are mainly Ukrainians and Belarusians posted via Poland or Lithuania, as well as Brazilians and Indians posted via Portugal. The average duration of postings is around five months, both for EU citizens (who are relatively often posted for either very short or very long periods) and for TCNs (who are more concentrated around the five-month duration). About half of all TCNs are posted for periods exceeding 90 days – the threshold beyond which the Netherlands may require a residence permit.

The Netherlands also posts workers to other EU Member States, mainly to our neighbours Belgium and Germany, and to France. Each year, this involves around 80,000 to 120,000 A1 certificates, primarily under Article 13 of the Basic Regulation for work in multiple Member States, and to a lesser extent under Article 12 for postings to the construction, manufacturing, and services sectors.

Finally, the limited publicly available inspection data make it difficult to obtain a complete picture of supervision, compliance, and potential infringements.

The study
This country report was prepared as part of POSTING.STAT 2.0 and provides insight into the scale, characteristics, and impact of intra-EU posting to and from the Netherlands, as well as into the scale and characteristics of related infringements. POSTING.STAT 2.0 is a European research project that collects and analyses statistical data on intra-EU posting based on national registration data. The project is carried out by a consortium of eleven Member States coordinated by HIVA-KU Leuven and follows the earlier POSTING.STAT project. An earlier country report for the Netherlands was published in that context as well.

Method used
This study is primarily based on two different sources: A1 certificates, which relate to the applicable social security legislation of posted workers, and the Dutch prior notification tool (WagwEU), which registers the actual intention to provide services in the Netherlands. These sources capture different dimensions and are therefore not directly comparable, but they do complement one another.