Minister Van Hijum of Social Affairs and Employment: “With the higher fines, I want to send a clear signal: we no longer tolerate the exploitation of workers. Companies that are guilty of this will face heavier penalties. Employers should not deliberately violate the law because complying with the rules costs more than the profit they make from low wages. We are preventing that with this measure.”

The higher fines will apply to the following laws: the use of illegal labor (Wav), for paying the Minimum Wage and the Minimum Vacation Allowance (Wml), when employing workers through lending (Waadi), and the law concerning the working conditions for posted workers in the EU (WagwEU).

The fines will increase significantly because they will be indexed retroactively. The fines have not been adjusted in recent years, and it is expected that they will rise by about 18% per violation. From now on, there will be an annual indexing of the amounts, so that the fines are taken seriously and continue to have an effect. More information about the increase in fines will follow in early 2026.