Six foreign embassies refuse court order to cough up wrongful termination payments

At least six foreign embassies in the Netherlands are ignoring court orders to pay former employees compensation for wrongful termination, NRC and online program BOOS report after speaking to workers involved and examining court rulings. These embassy workers, who fall under Dutch labor law, are losing out on tens of thousands of euros, despite pressure from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the embassies to follow the law.

The embassy of Brazil fired a driver in 2020 after a doctor declared him medically unfit due to burnout. After two years of legal battles, the court in The Hague ordered the embassy in October 2022 to pay the driver over 50,000 euros. He’s still waiting.

The embassy of Algeria fired an admin worker in 2021 who couldn’t participate in embassy parties during the pandemic due to his diabetes. Wrongful, the court ruled, ordering the embassy to pay him over 100,000 euros.

The newspaper found similar tales from the embassies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Morocco. The employees are subject to Dutch labor law. They live here, most have a Dutch passport, and all pay their taxes. But the embassies use diplomatic immunity - laid down in the Vienna Convention to protect diplomats so they can do their work under challenging circumstances - to ignore court rulings and avoid their obligations towards their employees, NRC wrote.

At the end of last year, GroenLinks and the PvdA argued in parliament for a guarantee fund to ensure that Dutch employees of foreign embassies receive the compensation they deserve, even if the embassy won’t cooperate. The government can then fight the embassy for reimbursement, and the wrongfully dismissed employees can get on with their lives.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the newspapers that it has called the ambassadors of the relevant embassies to account in formal discussions. In one case, the Dutch ambassador to one of the countries drew attention to the matter there. The Ministry will also send a diplomatic note to all the embassies in The Hague to remind them that they have to comply with Dutch laws and regulations.

The Ministry is against a guarantee fund as recommended by the left-wing parties. “The Dutch State is not a party to these labor disputes,” Minister Wopke Hoekstra of Foreign Affairs told BOOS. He called it “extremely uncomfortable” that embassies ignore Dutch court rulings. He said that he’ll start the conversation but had no means of enforcing the embassies to follow the Dutch judge’s orders.