We have a UK citizen who we are looking to employ in the Netherlands and my understanding is that we need a Netherlands based company in order to sponsor his application for a work permit. On this subject, we also need support on completing the relevant application forms – is this also something that you would be able to advise on?
Answer:
In order to be allowed to live and work for your own company in the Netherlands, this new BV (which would be the new employer) needs to have Recognised Sponsor status from the Dutch Immigration Authorities (IND) before it can sponsor any Knowledge Migrants. It costs just under 3000 Euros, takes around 4 months and your company would be thoroughly assessed by the Enterprise Agency for financial stability. It is not at all certain your application would succeed.
The company needs to be in one of the sectors that the authorities (through an organization called RVO) wants NL to develop and grow (mostly tech sectors) and then the company would have to be approved by the IND (again with RVO analysis) to become a Recognised Sponsor before you could hire yourself or any other (non EU) employee from abroad.
The easiest way in to the Netherlands for an employee would be to have a payroll company employ the person, and then second him/her to the new BV. That will cost around 600-700 Euros per month, on top of the Highly Skilled Migrant level salary that would have to be paid. In both cases, the employee would have to qualify as a Highly Skilled Migrant, so they’d have to think carefully about what the job would entail.
Complicated, but no Immigration Department makes it easy for foreign nationals unless it’s by a controlled and approved route.
