Taking a job on the side: can you?

What kind of side job are we talking about?

Many of you reside in the Netherlands on the basis of a Directive 2005/71/EC permit. A number of you are employed by educational or research institutions and reside in this country on the basis of the highly skilled migrant scheme. As an unpaid scientific researcher, you may also be entitled to a residence permit with the restriction ‘paid employment’ (with a sub-purpose of ‘unpaid scientific researcher’). On the back of all these permits it will say: ‘TWV niet vereist. Andere arbeid niet toegestaan’. In English this means: ‘Work permit not required. No other employment allowed’.  Although this seems like a clear statement, it still leaves a lot of possibilities if your job on the side is research related. If it is not, then things get more complicated.  

Education or other research-related activities

What are your options if you reside here on the basis of a Directive 2005/71/EC permit? According to article 11 of the directive researchers admitted on the basis of the directive are permitted to teach in accordance with national legislation. According to Dutch law, you are entitled to teach providing your lectures are related to the subject of your own research. The host institution is responsible for determining whether teaching activities are related to your research project.

There may be cases in which you are required to or want to carry out work other than teaching as a part of the research project. For example, if you are a medical researcher you may wish to study patients. This is also allowed under Dutch law.

You are allowed to receive remuneration for all these activities, with no need for a work permit. If the work requires a separate employment contract, it is permitted to have such a contract issued to you. The contract may even take the form of a temporary employment agency contract. However, you must conduct the activities for the same legal entity as the one who signed the host agreement for your research.

You may sometimes be required to carry out activities at more than one research institution over the course of a single research project. This does not pose a problem as long as these activities are clearly part of your research project as described in the host agreement.

What are the preconditions?

There are some preconditions if you want to carry out extra activities related to your research. First of all the additional activities carried out as part of the actual research may not be an end in themselves. Secondly the number of hours spent conducting research must exceed the total number of hours spent conducting the other activities. And finally the other activities must be featured in the original host agreement submitted with the application for a provisional residence permit (MVV) or residence permit.

We would recommend that you describe the purpose of the research project and activities in the broadest possible terms. For example, it may not be clear at the time of writing whether you will be lecturing or seeing patients. If there is any likelihood that this may occur, it should be included in the host agreement.

Other non-research-related activities

If you are admitted on the basis of the EU directive and you wish to carry out non-research-related work, the employer will have to apply for a work permit. The body responsible for deciding on the matter, UWV WERKbedrijf, will conduct a ‘fully-fledged’ assessment of the application. Amongst other procedures, this entails that the employer will have to demonstrate that there are no prioritized parties capable of doing the same work. This means the activities cannot be carried out by Dutch nationals, EU/EEA/Swiss nationals or others with a work permit exemption. Here too, the actual research must be the main purpose of residence in the Netherlands. If the other activities are set to take up more time than the research itself, a request for amendment to the residence permit restriction (to ‘paid employment’) will have to be submitted.

Highly skilled migrants and unpaid scientific researchers

If you are visiting the Netherlands as part of the highly skilled migrant scheme or as unpaid scientific researcher you are also entitled to carry out other research-related work. This will not require a work permit. You may only carry out other non-research related activities if the employer has obtained a work permit for this part of the work. UWV WERKbedrijf will conduct a ‘fully-fledged’ assessment of the work permit application according to the procedures described above.