Flexicurity in the AI era
The Dutch labour market needs an upgrade
Quote columnist (and kick ass VC) Anke Huiskes argued in this article this week that the Netherlands needs a radical labour market reform because AI will force large-scale job transitions. She contrasts a U.S.-style layoff culture with Denmark’s flexicurity model: easier to adjust headcount, combined with strong social protection and active re-skilling so people return to work quickly. Her core point: if we want to stay competitive, we need more wendbaarheid (agility) and that requires political courage.
Huiskes makes a persuasive case that the Dutch labour market needs a serious upgrade, and that AI makes the timing more urgent, not less. If work is going to be reshuffled at scale, we can’t keep treating mobility like a moral failure or a legal trench war. Her framing of Denmark’s flexicurity model is useful because it doesn’t romanticize layoffs; it tries to reconcile two things that are both true: companies need to be able to adapt, and people need to be able to land. If the next economic cycle is going to be defined by faster skill shifts, then political courage isn’t just about “daring to be tough,” it’s about daring to redesign the system rather than patch it.
Where I’d be careful is in what we choose to copy. Flexicurity works as a package, not as a slogan. The “flex” part is easy to say. The “security” part is hard to execute. Making it simpler to separate without simultaneously building a credible re-employment machine – training capacity, placement support, incentives that actually move people and institutions that can operate at speed – doesn’t create wendbaarheid, it creates fragility. Execution matters more than ideology here, and that’s precisely why reform is so difficult: it’s not one law, it’s a system.
The conclusion I land on is close to hers, but with a stronger emphasis on design and accountability. If the Netherlands wants to compete, we need to reduce the fear of hiring and the paralysis around change, but we also need to make the landing predictable and humane, not rhetorical. This debate should be framed less as “pro” or “anti” workers, and more as a test of whether we can build a labour market that reallocates talent quickly without breaking trust. That’s what real political courage would look like.
I completely agree. In fact, I recently stepped away from my PhD at the VU because of a fundamental disagreement on this issue. The discussion was heavily focused on classification, whether a platform worker is technically a freelancer or an employee, rather than on what these developments mean for businesses and the Dutch labour market more broadly.
Instead of constantly debating whether new forms of work should exist, we should be asking how they can be shaped in ways that work for both businesses and working people. In a rapidly changing economy, emerging work models are not automatically a threat. They may also offer opportunities for flexibility, mobility and growth if embedded in the right institutional framework.
The broader crackdown on bogus self-employment in the Netherlands raises a deeper question about responsibility. Who absorbs the risk of unemployment and reskilling, the individual, the employer or the state? Denmark approaches this as a collective issue tied to national competitiveness and social trust. The state plays a central role in supporting mobility and retraining, which allows people to remain economically active while maintaining a decent standard of living. In contrast, the Dutch model places more responsibility on either the employer or the unemployed individual to manage this transition or to reskill.
If labour is not sufficiently mobile and able to meet changing business needs, the Netherlands risks falling behind. A system that makes adaptation difficult, whether through rigid dismissal rules or uncertainty around classification, may discourage firms from expanding and investing.