The Dutch GVVA: why it rarely works for blue-collar roles, and the 2027 change every hirer should plan for

Dutch employers ask us about the GVVA more than any other permit, and usually for the same kind of role: drivers, warehouse operatives, production staff. The honest answer for those roles is that the GVVA exists, it is the correct legal route on paper, and it is rarely the one that gets anyone onto your floor.

This is why, what the route actually involves, and the change coming in 2027 that every Dutch user of supplied labour should already be planning for.

What the GVVA is

The GVVA — gecombineerde vergunning voor verblijf en arbeid, the single permit — combines residence and the right to work for a non-EU national employed in the Netherlands for more than three months. The IND issues it, but the labour-market half of the decision belongs to UWV.

Two features matter more than any other. The permit names the employer: the worker may work for you, in the role described, and nobody else. And if the worker moves, the new employer applies for a new permit — the original does not travel with them.

The labour market test is where most files end

Before a GVVA is granted, you must have looked for someone in the Netherlands and the wider EU and EEA first. In practice that means registering the vacancy with an UWV employer service point and recruiting actively for around five weeks, then being able to show what you did, who applied, and why they were unsuitable.

The test is not a formality, and the reason it bites hardest on blue-collar roles is structural. The EU has free movement of workers. For a truck driver, a forklift operator or a production line worker, UWV's working assumption is that a suitable candidate exists somewhere among several hundred million EU and EEA residents, and the burden is on you to show otherwise. For those roles that is very difficult to do, and Dutch immigration practitioners will generally tell you so before you spend the fee.

Where the GVVA does succeed is in roles with a genuinely thin European labour pool and a specific, documentable skill — and even then the evidence has to be thorough.

The salary has to be a real one

The worker must be paid the normal salary for the role under the collective labour agreement that applies to your company. This is not a route to cheaper labour and it is assessed as though someone were checking — because someone is. If your plan depends on a non-EU hire costing less than an EU one, the permit is the least of its problems.

How long it takes

Five weeks of recruitment, then the IND decision, which can take up to 90 days. Add an entry visa from the Dutch embassy where the worker's nationality requires one. Twelve to sixteen weeks from deciding to hire to a worker on site is a realistic planning figure for a straightforward file — and that assumes the labour market test is passed, which for the roles above is the assumption most likely to fail.

The alternatives, honestly

The highly skilled migrant route is fast and reliable — but only for roles above the IND salary threshold, through a recognised sponsor. It does not help with operational roles.

Posting from another member state. A worker lawfully employed by a company in another EU country can, in defined circumstances, be posted to the Netherlands to carry out work there. We set out how posting works in posting workers from Lithuania to the EU. It is a real route, but the structure has to be genuine — a real employer in the sending country, a real assignment, Dutch minimum conditions for the duration — and the detail decides whether it is lawful. It is not a way of avoiding the GVVA by relabelling it.

Our Netherlands hiring guide sets out how the routes compare on lead time and on what each one asks of you.

The change every Dutch hirer should plan for: the Wtta

The Netherlands is introducing a mandatory admission system for anyone who supplies workers to another company: the Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling arbeidskrachten, or Wtta. As currently scheduled it enters into force on 1 January 2027, with enforcement by the Labour Inspectorate from 1 January 2028.

Three points matter for you as the company using the workers.

It covers foreign suppliers. The test is whether work is performed in the Netherlands under the direction of a third party, not where the supplier is based. A staffing company in Lithuania, Poland or anywhere else supplying people to work under your supervision on a Dutch site is in scope in the same way a Dutch agency is.

You will have to check before work starts. Hirers may only take workers from admitted suppliers, and both the supplier and the hirer can be fined if a non-admitted supplier is used. "We assumed they were registered" will not be an answer.

It will shrink the market. Admission requires clean payroll and working-time records, a certificate of conduct for the company, an inspection, and a security deposit of €100,000 — €50,000 for start-ups. Plenty of suppliers operating today will not meet that. If your workforce depends on one of them, you want to find out in 2026, not in January 2028.

The practical step now is a single question to every supplier you use: what is your plan for Wtta admission, and when will you have it? An organised supplier will have an answer. The same discipline applies in Lithuania, where we wrote about checking an agency is actually on the official list.

The short version

For skilled roles with a thin European labour pool, the GVVA is the correct route and it works if the file is built properly. For drivers, warehouse and production staff it is usually three months spent arriving at a refusal. Whatever route you use, from 2028 the supplier behind it has to be admitted, and checking that becomes your job.

Rules in this area are revised often, and the Wtta timetable has already moved once. Verify the current position before committing to a plan — or tell us the roles and the start date and we will tell you which route is realistic for your case, including when the answer is none of them.