Social affairs minister Eddy van Hijum wants to tighten European rules that enable third-country nationals to work for companies based in other EU nations, even if they have never lived there.
Van Hijum said firms in sectors such as construction, transport and horticulture were using “shady constructions” to use freedom of movement rules to exploit workers and undercut their competitors.
Between 2022 and 2024 the official number of non-EU agency workers in the Netherlands who were recruited in other countries grew from 22,7500 to 27,000, but the real numbers are believed to be higher.
Workers from countries such as Uzbekistan and Belarus are hired by firms based in Poland and Lithuania and immediately sent to work in the Netherlands, sometimes with only a stopover at the airport in between.
“This is not how free movement of people and services is supposed to work. It’s a race to the bottom in the field of labour,” Van Hijum told the Telegraaf.
“These people can be employed in the Netherland for lower wages and it’s linked to abuses. We have less control of the situation.”
EU rules
The NSC party minister wants to restrict the use of non-EU migrant workers by requiring them to have spent at least three months in the country where their employer is based before they can be deployed in the Netherlands.
“If it were down to me, I’d prefer a longer period,” Van Hijum said. “But to do that that we’d really need to change the European rules, which takes a long time. For three months it’s probably not necessary.”
Trade unions have also criticised the increasingly common practice of using employment agencies to get around migrant labour restrictions. Central Asian lorry drivers working for Lithuanian-based transport firms have been staging protests in truckers’ rest stops in Limburg this year against their working conditions.
The workers say they are underpaid, have their documents withheld and are forced to manipulate their tachograph readers and lie to police at checkpoints. The FNV union said its officials had been threatened by a “hit squad” from Lithuania when they visited a lorry park in Venlo earlier this year.
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