Stefan Sagel

Employment & Employee Benefits, Supreme Court Litigation, Litigation, and Pensions & Pension Funds

Partner since 2007, Stefan Sagel specialises in employment law and employee benefits. An important focus of his practice is litigation before the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, where he has represented companies, individual employees and trade unions in several landmark cases. He represents clients in individual and collective labour law matters, including dismissal, collective bargaining, transfer of undertaking, industrial action and co-determination. He was also appointed as Professor of Employment Law at Leiden University in 2013, where he obtained his PhD on ‘Summary dismissal for urgent cause’ in the same year. Stefan regularly works closely with other De Brauw practice groups, particularly the pension practice. In ranking Stefan as a "Star Individual" since 2020, Chambers described him as "the most active and prominent employment lawyer when it comes to cases brought forward to the Supreme Court." Stefan has twice won ILO’s Client Choice Award for the best Employment and Labour Lawyer in the Netherlands.

- Professor of Employment Law at Leiden University

- Regularly publishes articles in professional journals and newspapers on different employment law issues

- Chairman of the Arbitration Committee of the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB)

- Regularly lectures at events for fellow members of the judiciary, and on behalf of the Netherlands Bar Association

Stefan’s recent work includes:

Advising and representing companies, such as RELX, Schiphol, AkzoNobel, Rabobank, Shell, Booking.com and Uber, in numerous collective and individual employment matters (including transfer of undertakings, collective dismissals, collective bargaining, industrial action, co-determination, as well as unilateral amendment of employee benefits).

Assisting Volksbank in litigation against a former CFO who unsuccessfully claimed millions in wrongful termination compensation.

Participating in Supreme Court proceedings which held that the employer is under a duty of care (stemming from the standard of reasonableness and fairness) to agree to a proposal by an employee on sick leave for two years, to terminate the dormant employment agreement between the parties and to pay the statutory severance.

Participating in Supreme Court proceedings on behalf of the Dutch union FNV, where it was determined that the employment relationship of Deliveroo riders qualifies as an employment agreement and that Deliveroo has to apply the collective bargaining agreement used by the road haulage industry to these riders.

Participating in Supreme Court proceedings on behalf of Shell, which defined the scope of the statutory obligation to reinstatement (“herplaatsingsplicht“).