ABSTRACT
The chapter deals with the reform from status to contract which the Dutch civil service has undergone in recent years. The Netherlands had a typical Western European-oriented model of civil service until it was slowly but surely restructured from the 1980s onwards. Unlike many other countries, the Dutch authorities first reformed the social security regulatory framework before ending the reform by moving from status to contract by the Act of Parliament of 9 March 2017 which entered into force on 1 January 2020. The use of contracts of employment is widened at the collective level with the introduction of collective binding agreements in the public sector. The whole reform is still very recent, and it remains too early to draw long-lasting conclusions. However, it is of major importance to indicate the way that this reform was introduced and to outline its current legal status.
