The Netherlands is a small but highly densely populated country on the West coast of Europe. Having lost its colonial empire, it is devoid of much weight in foreign politics and the focus of Dutch politics over the last half century has therefore shifted to establishing and maintaining a Welfare State. In doing this, the Dutch frantically try to reconcile a competitive economy with a high degree of social protection. These efforts are made in a continuous process of corporatist bargaining between the Government and the social partners with a view to reaching agreements, often called the Poldermodel.

It leads Dutch lawmakers to a never ending fine tuning of the laws of the Welfare State, also in the arena of labour law, in which often remarkable compromises are born, such as the concept of `flexicurity¿.

All this made The Netherlands a kind of a `social laboratory¿, anxiously watched by numerous foreign observers, who ¿ in evaluating its products ¿ keep oscillating between `the Dutch disease¿ and `the Dutch miracle¿.

This book gives an outline of the actual state of labour law and the laws governing its system of industrial relations in The Netherlands.