A Dutch court has opened a route for unions to push for tougher penalties against foreign hauliers accused of making drivers take their regular weekly rest in the vehicle. In a ruling published on 22 April, the Raad van State, the Netherlands’ highest administrative court, said trade union FNV qualifies as an interested party in a penalty case against a Lithuanian transport company and ordered the Dutch infrastructure minister to take a fresh decision on the union’s objection.
The fine was issued on 12 May 2021. The Dutch ministry penalised the transport company €10,500 for seven infringements, each at €1,500. FNV objected, arguing that the penalty was too low to amount to effective enforcement, but the ministry rejected the objection on the grounds that the union was not an interested party. A lower court backed that view in 2022. The Raad van State has now overturned that part of the earlier judgment and told the minister to decide again on the union’s objection.
The case grew out of FNV’s own investigation into drivers’ working conditions and working time. The ruling says the union found that rest-time rules were not always being observed and that drivers were spending weekends in their vehicle cabs. It passed those findings to the Dutch inspectorate ILT, which used them in its own investigation and concluded that the transport company should be fined.
The court accepted that FNV was not acting as a random outsider but as a body representing workers whose interests could be directly affected by how the case was enforced. It pointed to the union’s statutory role in defending working conditions and compliance with work and rest-time rules, as well as its own field research into drivers staying in their cabs during rest periods.
The court said weak fines can fail drivers and competition
The Raad van State said a fine is not only about punishing the offender. It can also help stop an infringement, prevent it from happening again and improve compliance. Because of that, third parties can, in some cases, have a direct interest in a penalty decision where the effects affect labour-market conditions or competition.
That is what gives the case a wider importance for international haulage: if a fine is too weak to change behaviour, the court is effectively saying that unions may have grounds to challenge it. In other words, a penalty in a cab-rest case may no longer be the end of the story.
The penalty itself can now be challenged
The judges went further than simply letting the union into the room. They said that if a third party qualifies as an interested party in a penalty case, it may also argue about the level of the fine. In this case, the court said that if FNV can show the penalty should be higher because otherwise it is not effective, that could lead to a higher fine for the Lithuanian operator.
The decision does not open every penalty case to outside intervention. The Raad van State also held that the ministry’s letter of 23 December 2020, which stated that FNV would not be admitted to any future penalty procedure, was not itself a formal decision. It also said FNV’s note to ILT was not a formal enforcement request.
So the ruling does not mean every union, trade body or campaign group can automatically join a fine case. The court made clear that each case still has to pass the direct interest test.
The immediate next step is procedural: the Dutch infrastructure minister must now take a fresh decision on FNV’s objection to the 2021 fine.
