Full-time employees in the Netherlands are entitled to at least 20 days of paid vacation per year. Depending on the provisions in the collective labor agreement ( cao ) or employment contract, there may be more days of vacation.
The main rule regarding the length of paid leave in the Netherlands refers to the number of hours off, not days. It can be found on rijksoverheid.nl and is as follows: an employee is entitled to leave per year for an hourly amount of at least four times the number of weekly working hours.
It sounds complicated, but it boils down to this: every full-time employee is entitled to at least four weeks (20 working days) of vacation per year. If the working week is 40 hours, then four times that is 160 hours, and 160 hours is 20 working days of 8 hours each.
In the case of a shorter working week, the number of hours of leave is proportionally lower. If someone works 24 hours a week (e.g. 3 days a week, 8 hours each), then in a year they are entitled to 96 hours of leave (because 4 times 24 is 96). In this case, this means 12 full days.
In this example, the employee only works 3 days a week, so he will also be able to ensure that he has four full weeks off from work by using his leave (because he works 3 days a week and has 12 days of leave per year).
In other words: the standard is a minimum of 20 days off per year for full-time employment , and in the case of shorter working hours it is proportionally less. However, this should always lead to a situation in which, if the entire leave is used at once, it would lead to four weeks off.
An employee does not have to take a full day of leave every time, according to the government website rijksoverheid.nl . They can also take their leave “in chunks”, i.e. “loose hours”, e.g. taking only one or two hours of leave on a given day.
In the Netherlands, many sectors and companies have collective labour agreements ( cao ), which are the result of negotiations between employee organisations (usually trade unions) and employers. A collective labour agreement may contain provisions extending the minimum length of holiday to a greater extent than the general rules. A specific employment contract may also contain provisions concerning additional days of holiday.
As a result, many Dutch people have more than 20 days of holiday per year . On average, workers in the wind farm country have around 24-25. Compared to the situation in many other EU countries, such as France or Sweden, this is not very much.
In some sectors, however, employees have a lot of free time. Education is definitely the best in this respect, with 53.5 such days per year (in the case of full-time employment). This is of course related to school holidays and vacations. The downside is that employees of the education system (e.g. teachers) are dependent on the school calendar and have to use most of their vacation when students have free time.
Also in public administration, higher education and science, the energy sector, the financial industry and telecommunications, the number of vacation days is usually higher than the national average. However, everything depends on the provisions in individual collective labor agreements and employment contracts.
Holiday days are called vakantiedagen in Dutch. Holidays that are statutory, i.e. basic holiday (e.g. 20 days for people with full-time employment), are called wettelijke vakantiedagen (“statutory days off”).
Any additional days of leave resulting from the provisions of a collective agreement or from an employment contract are bovenwettelijke vakantiedagen (“days off in excess of the statutory provisions”), sometimes also referred to simply as extra vakantiedagen (additional days off) or extra vakantie-uren (“additional hours off”).
The employer should generally agree to the vacation date proposed by the employee. They may refuse only if the potential vacation during that time would significantly disrupt the functioning of the company. In industries where there are no working periods (e.g. in education), the employee’s freedom to determine the vacation period is limited and they may be required to use it during the indicated period (e.g. during the summer holidays).
If an employee has not used all of their “statutory days off” in a given year, they should use them by the end of June of the following year . For example, if someone has three days of basic leave left from 2023, they must use them by 30 June 2024. This period can be extended, but only with the employer’s consent or as part of a collective labour agreement ( cao ). “Extra statutory days off” can be used with a longer delay, up to 5 years from the time they are obtained.
If the employee does not use the additional, statutory days of leave, and both the employer and the employee agree to this, the employer may “buy” the days off from the employee , paying the employee the remuneration due for those days. The employer cannot buy basic (“statutory”) days off (the only exception is when the employment contract ends).
The right to paid leave is also acquired during sick leave and maternity leave. However, it is not acquired during unpaid leave.
If an employee falls ill during a paid holiday, they will keep the days off that fall during the period of sickness after informing their employer and taking sick leave. They can then reach an agreement with their employer on a new holiday date, as we read on the website rijksoverheid.nl .