The number of redundancy requests to district courts doubled in June, just ahead of the introduction of the new redundancy law on July 1.

The number of requests rose last month to 1,700, the law council said on Tuesday, twice as many as in June 2014.

The new law is intended to create more jobs but also makes redundancy easier in order to encourage people to move on.

District courts in the large cities said last week that an unusual number of redundancy requests had been received in June. Social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher said at the time that reports of a possible ‘wave of redundancies’ was ‘hysteria’.

Lawyer Marco Veenstra of employers’ organisation AWVN told the NRC that the new law is very strict. ‘For instance, in cases where the file on an employee was rather thin, the district judge could say it would be in the employee’s interest not to return to the job. He could compensate for this in the redundancy payment. This is no longer possible,’ Veenstra said.