THE BOTTOM LINE
- Temporary status is not a bridge to permanent rights: Businesses hiring third-country nationals (like Turkish citizens) who hold residence permits under the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive should not assume this employment automatically creates a path to long-term residency under other treaties, such as the EU-Turkey Association Agreement.
- Not all work is “legal employment” for accruing rights: The court confirmed that for a Turkish national’s work to be considered legal employment that builds residency rights, their underlying right to stay in the country must be stable and secure. A temporary, precarious status does not qualify.
- Repeating applications without new facts will fail: Simply working for a longer period under the same temporary permit is not considered a “new fact” that justifies re-evaluating a denied residence application. Dutch authorities can summarily dismiss such repeat claims.
THE DETAILS
The case centered on a Turkish national who resided in the Netherlands under the Temporary Protection Directive, a measure activated to support those fleeing the war in Ukraine. Having worked for a Dutch employer for two years, he applied for a residence permit based on Decision 1/80 of the EU-Turkey Association Agreement. This agreement grants Turkish workers who have been in legal employment in an EU member state for a specified period the right to continue working and residing there. The core legal question was whether work performed while under temporary protection status could be considered legal employment for this purpose.
The District Court of The Hague sided with the Dutch immigration authorities, ruling that the applicant’s work did not qualify. The court’s reasoning hinged on the nature of the applicant’s residence permit. The Temporary Protection Directive is, by definition, an exceptional and temporary measure. It does not provide the stable and non-precarious legal footing required to build long-term rights under the EU-Turkey Association Agreement. The court held that for employment to be truly “legal” in the context of Decision 1/80, the worker must have a stable and secure position in the host country’s labor market, which was not the case here.
This was the applicant’s second attempt to secure the permit on these grounds. His first application had been rejected for the same reason, a decision previously upheld by the same court. In this subsequent case, he argued that having worked for a longer period constituted a “new circumstance.” The court firmly rejected this argument, clarifying that the duration of work does not alter the fundamental legal character of the temporary residence permit. Under Dutch administrative law, an authority is not required to fully re-assess a case if no genuinely new facts or changed circumstances are presented. The court found that the legal basis for the claim was identical to the first, and therefore the Minister was correct to dismiss the application without a full review.
SOURCE
Source: District Court of The Hague
