Vaststellingsovereenkomst 2026: the Dutch Settlement Agreement, Bedenktijd and WW

Dutch law leaves three routes out of an employment contract: permission from UWV, dissolution by the subdistrict court (kantonrechter), and an ending by mutual consent. Only the third needs no outside body, and it is recorded in a settlement agreement (vaststellingsovereenkomst), a written contract in which employer and employee fix the terms on which the employment contract (arbeidsovereenkomst) stops.

The document is usually short and what turns on it is not. Two things decide whether signing costs money: the reflection period (bedenktijd) in artikel 7:670b BW, and the two Werkloosheidswet articles that decide when an unemployment benefit (WW-uitkering) starts.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Netherlands law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

What a vaststellingsovereenkomst is

The name comes from artikel 7:900 BW, in Titel 15 of Boek 7. Parties to a vaststellingsovereenkomst bind themselves to a determination of what applies between them, in order to end or prevent uncertainty or a dispute, and it holds even where it departs from the legal position that existed before.

Applied to employment, it lets the parties agree that the contract ends on a set date and on set terms. No permission is sought from UWV, no dissolution (ontbinding) is asked of the subdistrict court (kantonrechter), and none of the nine grounds in artikel 7:669 lid 3 BW has to be made out.

Artikel 7:670b lid 1 BW adds one formal requirement for this use. An agreement by which an arbeidsovereenkomst is ended is valid only where it was entered into in writing, so an oral agreement to part ways does not end the contract.

The bedenktijd: fourteen days, or three weeks

Artikel 7:670b lid 2 BW gives the employee the right to dissolve the agreement (ontbinden) by a written statement addressed to the employer, without giving reasons, within fourteen days of the date on which the agreement came about.

Three features of that wording carry the weight. The clock runs from the date the agreement came about, not from the last working day, the statement has to be in writing, and no reason is required. An employer therefore cannot make the withdrawal conditional on one being given.

Lid 3 puts a duty on the employer to mention that right in the agreement itself. Where the agreement does not mention it, the period in lid 2 becomes three weeks. The sanction is automatic and needs no application to any body.

Lid 6 closes the obvious escape route. Any clause excluding or limiting the lid 2 right is void (nietig), so a waiver written into the agreement has no effect.

Two situations in which the bedenktijd does not apply

Lid 4 deals with repetition. Where the parties enter into a new termination agreement within six months of an earlier dissolution under lid 2, or of a revocation (herroeping) under artikel 7:671 lid 2 BW, leden 2 and 3 do not apply. The reflection right does not renew itself for each fresh document.

Lid 5 is the exception a generic explanation tends to hide. Leden 2 to 4 do not apply at all to a bestuurder van een rechtspersoon whose employment contract cannot be restored under Boek 2 BW, nor to the bestuurder of a comparable foreign legal person.

A statutory director therefore has no fourteen day window in which to undo a signature. That follows from the statute and not from the wording of the agreement, so a director reading a general description of the bedenktijd is reading about someone else.

Why the WW-uitkering drives the drafting

A WW-uitkering is decided by UWV under the Werkloosheidswet, not by the parties to the agreement. The agreement can still make that benefit start late, which is why the drafting follows a recognisable pattern.

Artikel 17 lid 1 WW sets the entry condition: a right arises where the employee had at least one working hour in at least 26 of the 36 calendar weeks immediately before the first day of unemployment. Where artikel 19 lid 3 or lid 4 WW has been applied, artikel 17 lid 2 WW measures the same 26 out of 36 weeks from the day the loss of working hours occurred rather than from the first day of unemployment. Two further articles decide whether the way the contract ended cuts across it.

Artikel 24 WW: verwijtbare werkloosheid

Artikel 24 lid 1 sub a WW obliges an employee to prevent becoming culpably unemployed (verwijtbaar werkloos), and lid 2 defines that state in two limbs.

Sub a covers unemployment underlain by an urgent cause (dringende reden) within the meaning of artikel 7:678 BW, for which the employee can be blamed. Sub b covers employment ended by or at the request of the employee, without such objections to continuing it that continuation could not reasonably be required of them.

Sub b is the limb a settlement agreement has to survive, and artikel 24 lid 6 WW is the provision that lets it. Failing to defend against, or agreeing to, an ending by or at the employer's request is not a breach of lid 1 sub a or of lid 5.

That paragraph is the legal basis for the standard drafting, not a custom of the market. Where the agreement records that the employer took the initiative, on a neutral ground, and without culpable conduct on the employee's side, the ending sits inside lid 6 rather than inside lid 2 sub b.

Signing while sick: the qualification lid 6 does not carry

Artikel 24 lid 6 WW answers a culpability objection. It does nothing for an employee who is ill, and three provisions have to be read together before a sick employee signs anything.

Artikel 24 lid 10 WW is the first. By way of exception to leden 6 and 7, an employee who without proper grounds fails to defend against, or who agrees to, an ending of the employment (dienstbetrekking) during the extended wage payment period of artikel 25 lid 9 WIA commits an act harming the benefit funds (benadelingshandeling) within lid 5. That extended period is the wage sanction UWV imposes on an employer that has done too little on returning the employee to work (re-integratie), and lid 6 is expressly switched off inside it.

The second is artikel 19 lid 1 sub a WW, under which there is no right to a WW-uitkering at all while a benefit under the Ziektewet is being received. The third is artikel 45 lid 1 sub j ZW, which lets UWV refuse ziekengeld wholly or partly, temporarily or permanently, where the insured person's conduct harms or could harm the Algemeen Werkloosheidsfonds.

Read together those three describe a real gap rather than a theoretical one. An employee who is sick and signs away the employer's continued wage payment under artikel 7:629 BW can meet a refusal of ziekengeld with no WW-uitkering standing behind it, so the rules on sick pay (loondoorbetaling bij ziekte) are the ones to read first, and to read inside the bedenktijd rather than after it.

Artikel 19 lid 3 WW: the fictieve opzegtermijn

The second rule is different in kind, and it is the one that quietly costs weeks of income. Artikel 19 lid 3 WW provides that there is no right to a benefit for as long as the legally applicable notice period, the rechtens geldende opzegtermijn, has not expired, where the contract ended by opzegging or by written agreement.

The same lid defines that period as the one the employer or the employee ought to observe on notice under artikel 7:672 BW. It then adds the decisive sentence: where the employment ended by mutual consent, it is the employer's notice period that applies, not the employee's one month.

The deemed date of notice is the date on which the ending was agreed in writing. Because artikel 7:672 lid 1 BW makes notice take effect at the end of the month unless another day was fixed in writing or by usage, the period is in practice counted from the end of the month in which the agreement was signed.

This is not a culpability refusal that can be argued away on the facts. It is an unpaid gap, and it opens whenever the agreed end date falls inside that period.

A worked example. An employee with seven years of service has an employer's notice period of two months under artikel 7:672 lid 2 sub b BW. The agreement is signed on 10 March 2026, so notice is deemed given on that date and, running to the end of the month, the period expires on 31 May 2026.

Where the agreement sets the last working day at 30 April 2026, salary stops on that day and the WW-uitkering does not start until 1 June. The month of May carries neither of the two. Setting the end date at 31 May instead closes the gap, at the price of one further month of employment.

Artikel 19 lid 4 WW adds a separate trap for fixed term work. Where a bepaalde tijd contract is ended early by mutual consent and contained no written interim notice clause under artikel 7:667 lid 3 BW, there is no benefit until the day the contract would have run out. Artikel 19 lid 6 WW confines both rules to that ending, so an employee to whom lid 3 or lid 4 has been applied is excluded only so far as the ended arbeidsovereenkomst is concerned.

What a WW-safe agreement contains

Nothing in the Werkloosheidswet prescribes a form of words, and UWV assesses the substance of the ending rather than its label. These are the points the two articles above turn on:

• The initiative is the employer's, said plainly, so the ending falls inside artikel 24 lid 6 WW.
• The ground is neutral, such as a difference of insight or a bedrijfseconomische reorganisation rather than conduct, which keeps it clear of artikel 24 lid 2 sub a WW.
• No verwijtbaarheid is recorded. Any statement that the employee acted culpably, or that there was a dringende reden, works against lid 6.
• The employer's opzegtermijn is observed, with the end date set on or after the expiry of the fictieve opzegtermijn of artikel 19 lid 3 WW.
• The severance treatment is stated: the gross amount, whether it corresponds to the transitievergoeding, and when it is paid.
• The final settlement is specified: outstanding wages, holiday days and holiday allowance (vakantiebijslag), plus any finale kwijting.
• The remaining clauses are dealt with: the concurrentiebeding and any relatiebeding, company property, and the reference letter (getuigschrift).

The severance figure is negotiable, and the statute sets the anchor

A mutual ending is not one of the routes listed in artikel 7:673 lid 1 BW, so statutory severance pay (transitievergoeding) is not triggered by operation of law here. Whatever is paid is paid because the agreement says so.

The statutory figure nevertheless dominates the negotiation, because it is what the alternative costs. An employer who cannot agree terms has to go to UWV or to the kantonrechter, where the transitievergoeding is owed anyway, alongside its own costs and the risk of an additional fair compensation award (billijke vergoeding).

The formula, what counts as loon, the 2026 ceiling of EUR 102,000 and the worked calculations are set out on the page for severance pay (transitievergoeding). The figure produced there is the number the negotiation normally starts from.

How a lump sum interacts with a WW-uitkering is decided by UWV under separate income rules, which are outside the scope of this page.

Clauses that decide more than they appear to

The non-compete clause (concurrentiebeding) does not lapse because the contract ended by agreement. Artikel 7:653 lid 3 BW lets the court annul it entirely where a clause in a fixed term contract is not necessary because of compelling business interests, or wholly or partly where the employee is unfairly disadvantaged.

Two further paragraphs matter at the point of exit. Under lid 4 the employer can derive no rights from the clause where the ending resulted from its own ernstig verwijtbaar handelen of nalaten, and under lid 5 the court may order compensation for the duration of a clause that substantially impedes work elsewhere. The same lid withholds that compensation where the ending, or the failure to continue the contract, resulted from the employee's own ernstig verwijtbaar handelen of nalaten.

The reference letter is a statutory right rather than a favour. Artikel 7:656 lid 1 BW obliges the employer to issue a getuigschrift on request at the end of the contract, and lid 6 forbids departing from the article to the employee's detriment.

If there is a dispute about the agreement

The forum is the kantonrechter. Artikel 93 sub c Rv assigns cases concerning an arbeidsovereenkomst to it telkens ongeacht het beloop of de waarde van de vordering, that is, regardless of what the claim is worth, so the money threshold in sub a is not the relevant grant.

Artikel 79 lid 1 Rv allows a party to conduct its own case in person there, without an advocaat. Artikel 108 lid 2 Rv separately deprives a forum choice clause of effect in an individual arbeidsovereenkomst, subject to two exceptions: where the clause was agreed after the dispute arose, and where it is the employee who turns to the designated court.

The dismissal routes this agreement avoids are mapped on the Netherlands employment law section page. The terms that feed the fictieve opzegtermijn are on the page for notice periods (opzegtermijn), and the wider structure of Dutch law on the Netherlands law overview.