Contacts with the legislator

Advisory opinions on legislative proposals

The President of the Supreme Court and the Procurator General at the Supreme Court may provide advisory opinions on draft legislative proposals at the request of the Minister of Justice and Security. As a rule, advisory opinions are given on proposed legislation relating to the organisation of the judicial system and coordination within it, and on changes to procedural law. These advisory opinions are politically neutral.

The choices made in the advisory opinions take into account that the President and the Procurator General cannot anticipate future proceedings before the Supreme Court regarding the interpretation and application of provisions that have been proposed and may become law. The joint responsibility of the three branches of government for human freedom and dignity, the principles of the democracy governed by the rule of law, and the values of the European Union are also taken into account.

The advisory opinions issued are published on the Supreme Court's website. In 2025, the President and the Procurator General published six advisory opinions on the merits of proposed legislation. These are:

• Response to the proposal for a catch-all provision in the new Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure (Article 2.1.7a Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure);
• Advisory opinion on proposals for an Abuses of Office by Members of Parliament and Administrators Reform Act and the declaration that there are grounds to consider a proposal to amend Article 119 of the Constitution;
• Advisory opinion on the Outline Policy Memorandum regarding Constitutional Review;
• Advisory Opinion on the draft legislative proposal 'Protection of assets under family law';
• Advisory opinion on draft legislative proposal Evaluation Act Mandatory Mental Healthcare Act (hereinafter "Wvggz") and Care and Compulsion (Psychogeriatric and Intellectually Disabled Patients) Act (hereinafter "Wzd");
• Response to draft proposal Amendment of the Constitution to introduce judicial authority to review laws against certain provisions of the Constitution and to the addition of a provision on limitations on fundamental rights.

Dialogue

As an institution, the Supreme Court fulfils an autonomous role in the good relations between representatives of the three branches of government. The President of the Supreme Court and the Procurator General at the Supreme Court perform a linking figurehead function that manifests itself mainly in contacts and conversations. Good relations contribute to mutual respect and an understanding of one another's responsibilities in polity and society. A direct dialogue between representatives of the branches of government allows for an exchange of views on the shared underlying responsibility for the function of the law in upholding human freedom and dignity, the principles of the democracy governed by the rule of law, and the values of the European Union.

Such a dialogue does not concern pending or future cases, but concerns topics that promote the understanding of and insight into one another's work. What information does one need about the nature of the other's work in order to do one's work as effectively as possible? Over the course of the year, the content of the Supreme Court's annual report was regularly used as a tool in the dialogue with representatives of the legislative branch.

Signals to the legislature

Since 2017, the Supreme Court's annual report has included an overview of decisions that draw the legislature's attention to a specific problem, also referred to as signals to the legislature. In 2025, there were 12 decisions (2020: 8 decisions; 2021: 10 decisions; 2022: 10 decisions; 2023: 6 decisions, 2024: 7 decisions).

The selection of such decisions is not based on a systematic approach. The overview is provided in light of the Supreme Court's duties of promoting the uniformity and the development of the law and offering legal protection. The executive, legislative and judicial branches of government each have their own responsibilities under law when legislation is drafted. They all share an interest in effective legislation that offers legal certainty to those seeking justice and to society as a whole. In serving this interest they also interact with each other. Effective interaction between the three branches of government will, among other things, promote the quality of the law, as well as the rate at which bottlenecks in the law can be recognized and resolved.

As part of that interaction, the Supreme Court may decide to include signals for technical legal issues concerning the application of legislation that arise in the cases it hears. Passing on signals can help society and those involved in the administration of justice to recognise what legal and technical problems the Supreme Court encounters in practice. Signals are intended as an aid, alongside the weekly publication of Supreme Court decisions on rechtspraak.nl. It is up to the legislature to decide whether it wants to respond to a signal from the Supreme Court, for example with a legislative procedure or through a dialogue between co-legislators. If the legislature has already responded to a judgment of the Supreme Court before that judgment is included in this section, then mentioning that response to the signal can further illustrate the dialogue between the branches of government.

The signals to the legislature in the Supreme Court's annual reports are of a variable nature. This may include, for example, the indication of legal problem areas, but it may also concern the identification of deficiencies in the law. Examples of points meriting attention that are of a technical legal nature include gaps in statutory law, rules that contravene higher-ranking rules, unclear regulations, or regulations that are not sufficiently harmonised with one another. Addressing a shortcoming in the law stems from the Supreme Court's duty to provide legal protection and promote the development of the law.

Signals from the Supreme Court to the legislature are unrelated to choices that are not up to the court, such as political choices. Sometimes the Supreme Court can provide a solution to an identified bottleneck in its decision, while remaining within the boundaries of its tasks. In other cases, the decision will indicate that this is in fact impossible or undesirable under the applicable law. Signals from the Supreme Court to the legislature are confined to questions that the Supreme Court encounters in its case load.

Judgments

Supreme Court 14 March 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:385

In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the current legislation does not allow for a decision to detain or an authorisation for admission and stay under the Care and Compulsion (Psychogeriatric and Intellectually Disabled Persons) Act to be implemented in an accommodation registered exclusively for care as referred to in the Mandatory Mental Health Care Act. The Supreme Court stated that it is not expected in the short term that the legislature will provide for the possibility that Wzd care can be provided in a Wvggz accommodation (or vice versa) in crisis situations, for a short period of time if necessary. The responsible Minister addressed the shortage of Wzd crisis places during the first evaluation of the Wvggz and Wzd. This has not yet led to a change in the law. According to Article 5(1) European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), no one may be deprived of their freedom except in cases provided for by or under the law. It must be foreseeable to citizens in which cases and under which clearly defined conditions the authorities have the power to deprive them of their freedom. National legislation must be sufficiently foreseeable in its application. Under these circumstances, in the Supreme Court's view, Article 5(1) ECHR precludes a Wzd authorisation from being granted with a view to enforcement in a Wvggz accommodation.

Supreme Court 28 March 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:483

This case involves the question of whether the legal relationship between doctoral candidates with a scholarship and a university medical centre qualifies as an employment contract (Article 7:610 Dutch Civil Code (DCC). The starting point for the review in cassation is that no appointment as a civil servant had taken place. Thus, if the rules of employment contract law do not apply to their legal relationship, it does not mean that the doctoral candidates with a scholarship had the legal status of civil servants, but rather that there was an unregulated agreement without protective provisions created specifically for the position of working people. With that result, the provisions of Title 7.10 DCC would not apply (Article 7:615 (old) DCC). If the legal relationship between the parties meets the description of an employment contract, such a result is not in line with the development of the law that has since led to the Public Servants (Standardization of Legal Status) Act. This is because its aim was to equalise the legal positions of (former) civil servants and employees as much as possible. Such a result then does not serve the purpose that the legislator intended with Article 7:615 (former) DCC either. For the gap in the legal protection of doctoral candidates with a scholarship that then arises, the legal system offers no justification. Nor can such justification be found in the Decree on the Doctoral Education Improvement Experiment. According to the explanation given to that decree, the court could conclude, depending on the circumstances of the case, that the relationship with a doctoral candidate had to be classified as an employment contract or an appointment as a civil servant. The Supreme Court rejected the complaints against the Court of Appeal's opinion that the doctoral candidates with a scholarship were working on the basis of an employment contract.

Supreme Court 4 April 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:518

This case concerns the lack of a regulatory framework for lawyers in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to be admitted as lawyers to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in civil cases so that they can litigate in those cases before the Supreme Court. On this judgment, see further in this annual report the section The Supreme Court, Civil Law.

Supreme Court 4 April 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:508

This case concerns the application of the 30% ruling within the meaning of Article 31a(2)(e) of the Dutch Wages and Salaries Tax Act 1964. When calculating the levy on excessive severance payments provided for in that article, how must the employee's indicative salary as referred to in Article 32bb(3) of the Dutch Wages and Salaries Tax Act 1964 be calculated? Must salary that consist of allowances or provisions belonging to the final levy component as referred to in Article 31(1)(f) of the Dutch Wages and Salaries Tax Act 1964, in respect of which, pursuant to Article 31a(2) of the Dutch Wages and Salaries Tax Act 1964, no final levy applies at the employer, such as extraterritorial allowances covered by the 30% ruling, also be taken into account? With reference to the Advocate General's advisory opinion (ECLI:NL:PHR:2024:1422, at 11), the Supreme Court ruled that the Court of Appeal had wrongly held that such exempted allowances and provisions did not fall under salary within the meaning of Article 32bb of the Dutch Wages and Salaries Tax Act 1964. In the Advocate General's advisory opinion (at 1.6, 9.5, 10.61, 10.65, among other things), it was considered of significance that the legislator did not take into account the impact of the working-related expenses scheme on (inter alia) Article 32bb of the Dutch Wages and Salaries Tax Act 1964.

Supreme Court 11 April 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:543

Can a person work as a temporary employee on the basis of a temporary employment contract within the meaning of Article 7:690 DCC if the temporary employment agency does not assign that person for the purposes of the hirer's profession or business, but for work in the household of a natural person? The Supreme Court ruled that the law does not preclude this. Insofar as the application of the rules in these triangular relationships lead to results that are incompatible with what the legislator had in mind in regulating Articles 7:690-691 DCC, it is primarily up to the legislator to set limits here.

Supreme Court 9 May 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:723

This case deals with the question of whether adults can be granted access to the files of family and juvenile proceedings concerning them in the past. On this judgment, see further in this annual report the section The Supreme Court, Civil Law.

Supreme Court 11 July 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1128

In this case, questions referred for a preliminary ruling had been submitted to the ECJ in the decision of 6 October 2023, ECLI:NL:HR:2023:1371. In that decision, the Supreme Court had ruled (in para. 5.4), among other things, that Article 36 of the Collection of State Taxes Act 1990 is formulated as being mandatory and that the collector has no discretionary authority to waive a claim for liability if a body as referred to in Article 36(1) Collection of State Taxes Act 1990 has failed to comply with its reporting obligation or has not done so in time. The law also does not grant the recipient the authority to mitigate the liability. This means that the collector is not free to weigh interests when applying that provision. After answering the questions referred for a preliminary ruling, the Supreme Court rendered final judgment in the case on 11 July 2025, in which it held superfluously that this case involved a situation where only one person, the sole director of a private limited liability company, was liable for a number of tax debts. Therefore, unlike in the case where different persons, for example different directors of the same body, are liable for a tax debt, and by the nature of the case a choice has to be made as to which of them is or are to be held liable for it, in this case there was no room for balancing interests in deciding to hold the interested party liable. If it is considered desirable that the collector does have that discretion, it is up to the legislator to amend the regulation on liability in the Collection of State Taxes Act 1990 to that end.

Supreme Court 26 September 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1386

This case concerns the question of whether a study expenses clause (also called training expenses clause) relating to the Professional Advocacy Training is invalid under Article 7:611a(4) DCC. A study expenses clause means that under certain circumstances, an employee must reimburse their employer for study expenses incurred on their behalf by their employer.
The Supreme Court ruled that Article 7:611a DCC must be interpreted in accordance with Directive (EU) 2019/1152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on transparent and predictable terms and conditions of employment in the European Union (OJ 2019, L 186). As soon as an employer has to offer a certain training to an employee on the basis of Article 7:611a(1) DCC because it is necessary for the employee's work, it constitutes an obligation within the meaning of Article 13 of the Directive. According to the Directive, such training must be offered free of charge. An interpretation of Article 7:611a DCC in which any training covered by paragraph 1 must be offered free of charge on the basis of paragraph 2 ensures that the provision is in line with the Directive. This is not altered by the fact that the legislator, when adapting Article 7:611a DCC to the Directive, may not have had this consequence of paragraph 1 clearly in mind.

Supreme Court 14 October 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1502

Can a claim for enforcement of a previously imposed conditional sentence for breach of general terms and conditions be heard together with a new criminal case? That is what happened in this case. It emerged in the Supreme Court's ruling that the appeal in cassation was admissible. For its reasons, the Supreme Court referred to the Advocate General's advisory opinion (ECLI:NL:PHR:2025:773, at 2), which addressed an ambiguity in the context of Article 361a of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Article 6:6:1 Code of Criminal Procedure.

Supreme Court 14 November 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1685

In this judgment, the Supreme Court ruled that the expiry of a legal claim for the dissolution of an agreement based on a failure to perform cannot be interrupted merely by a written communication in which the creditor unambiguously reserves their right. In its decision, the Supreme Court held that it does not follow from the parliamentary history that it has been considered that, as a result of the extension of the short prescription period until the claim for dissolution, the difference between the informal interruption possibility of Article 3:317(1) DCC and the more formal interruption possibility of Article 3:317(2) DCC may lead to results that are difficult to explain. Due to this difference in interruption regimes, the legal claim for dissolution due to a failure to perform may be dismissed sooner than the legal claim for performance of the agreement and the legal claim for the performance of obligations to pay compensation on account of failure to perform. In addition, the difference in interruption regimes leads to a difference between extrajudicial dissolution that is difficult to explain, where the creditor can interrupt the prescription period of a resulting legal claim for reversal in the manner described in Article 3:317(1) DCC out of court, and the claim for dissolution at law, the prescription period of which can only be interrupted by, briefly put, an act of prosecution. However, the Supreme Court considered this insufficient to place the claim for dissolution due to a failure to perform a reciprocal agreement under the interruption regime of Article 3:317(1) DCC, in spite of the unambiguous text of Article 3:317 DCC.

Supreme Court 25 November 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1774

In this case, the Court of Appeal had declared the Public Prosecution Service inadmissible in its prosecution of the municipality because the municipality, in the opinion of the Court of Appeal, was entitled to criminal immunity. The ground for cassation against this decision failed. The Supreme Court referred to its previous case law on Article 2 ECHR, which protects the right to life and includes the positive obligation of a state party to take appropriate measures to protect the life of anyone under its jurisdiction. The Supreme Court held that it is not possible to state in general terms what measures contracting states must take in order to comply with the positive obligations of Article 2 ECHR. It is therefore also impossible to say whether the existence of the possibility of prosecuting legal entities under public law is necessary to meet the requirements of Article 2 ECHR. The Supreme Court notes that a legislative proposal enabling this was rejected by the Dutch Senate on 10 November 2015. Against that background, the legislator will first have to consider whether there is still a need to broaden the possibilities to hold legal entities under public law and/or the persons who actually directed the conduct in question criminally liable.

Supreme Court 19 December 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1959

In a decision of 4 March 2022, ECLI:NL:HR:2022:336, the Supreme Court held that the possibility of gender-neutral registration in a birth certificate had at that time received renewed attention from the legislator, that legislation in this field was to be expected in the near future and that given this state of affairs, the questions referred for a preliminary ruling could not be answered. The Supreme Court also held that as long as there is no statutory regulation, it is up to the courts to decide in each specific case according to the nature and content of the application and the further circumstances of the case, including the possibility of deferring the decision regarding the application.
In its decision of 19 December 2025, the Supreme Court saw no reason to rule differently than in 2022: the law does not provide for the possibility of changing or improving the gender registration in a birth certificate to an 'X' or other gender-neutral designation if a person has the conviction of not belonging to the male or female sex, and the issue has retained the attention of Parliament and the government.