Thirteen Years of “Temporary” Work: Dutch Supreme Court to Rule on Structural Abuse of Agency Contracts

The Dutch Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case that may fundamentally redefine the legal boundaries of long-term agency work under EU law. On 21 March 2025, Advocate General (AG) De Bock issued her opinion. Her conclusion is unambiguous: a generic reference to the need for “a flexible workforce” is insufficient to justify the continued use of temporary agency contracts over a 13-year period. This is the first time the Dutch Supreme Court has been asked to interpret Directive 2008/104/EC on temporary agency work. The outcome may have significant implications for employers, temporary work agencies and the almost one million agency workers active in the Netherlands.

The case concerns a production worker who, through a succession of agency contracts and across three agencies, worked continuously for the same client for almost thirteen years. He repeatedly asked to be employed directly, but was refused. When his assignment ended in 2022 following the closure of the production site, he initiated proceedings. His central claim: the prolonged deployment amounted to an abuse of the legal framework, and he should be considered an employee of the client.

The district court and the court of appeal dismissed his claim. The appellate court accepted that the deployment had lasted unusually long, but it found no abuse: the company had offered an “objective justification” – its need for a flexible layer of staff. The worker brought the matter before the Dutch Supreme Court in cassation.

In her advisory opinion, AG De Bock concludes that the appeal must succeed. Although Dutch law imposes no statutory maximum duration for assignments with the same user, Directive 2008/104/EC is grounded in the principle that agency work must be temporary. Article 5(5) requires member states to take measures to prevent abuse arising from successive assignments, particularly where these are used to circumvent the objectives of the Directive.

Relying on recent case law from the Court of Justice of the EU – particularly JH/KG and Daimler – the AG formulates a two-stage assessment:

On the facts, AG De Bock concludes that 13 years of continuous agency work plainly exceeds the threshold of temporariness. The employer’s justification – “a need for flexibility” – is in her view too generic and fails to meet the standard required by EU law.

The Dutch case stands out in Europe, where most countries impose clear legal limits on the duration of temporary agency work to prevent structural abuse.

In contrast, the Netherlands has no statutory maximum, relying instead on case-by-case legal interpretation. This makes the current Dutch Supreme Court case particularly relevant, as it may bring the Netherlands more in line with its European counterparts.

This comparison also shows that employing workers across borders within the EU under agency arrangements requires careful legal scrutiny. Each jurisdiction has its own set of rules, and compliance must be assessed individually in every case.

The opinion brings renewed focus to structural issues in the Dutch labour market. Despite the Directive’s transposition into national law, the Netherlands still does not impose a legal maximum on the duration of agency work at a single client.

Meanwhile, temporary work remains widespread. According to the Employment Agency Monitor 2024 (Uitzendmonitor 2024), 912,010 individuals performed agency work in the Netherlands during 2023 – roughly 4.7% of the entire working population. Nearly half of these were regular agency workers (not students or labour migrants).

This group represents a significant and structurally embedded part of the labour market. The opinion makes clear that employers cannot rely indefinitely on temporary contracts without risking legal scrutiny. Nor can the absence of a national time limit relieve courts from their obligation to assess, case by case, whether the assignment remains genuinely temporary.

The Dutch Supreme Court is expected to deliver its judgment on 26 September 2025. Should it adopt the AG’s reasoning, the case will be remitted to a different appellate court. More broadly, the Court will be setting an important precedent: that the requirement of temporariness has legal weight and cannot be set aside by invoking operational needs alone.

Such a ruling would raise the evidentiary bar for employers relying on long-term agency work, and could prompt a wave of new claims from workers seeking direct employment status.

The AG’s opinion reinforces the underlying purpose of the Directive: temporary work must be genuinely temporary. It also underscores the legal risks for employers and agencies that rely on long-term agency placements without a robust and specific justification.

The Dutch case sits at the crossroads of national policy and European labour law. If the Supreme Court aligns with prevailing practices across the EU, the Netherlands may soon need to consider legislative changes that impose clear time limits and curb structural abuse of temporary work.

In the meantime, legal advisers representing employers, HR departments or staffing firms should take note: generic references to flexibility will no longer be sufficient, neither in the Netherlands nor in other EU countries. Conversely, the case may open the door for employees and unions to challenge entrenched patterns of flexible labour that effectively bypass the protections of standard employment.