Taking Back What's Ours? Possibilities and Impossibilities of Recapturing Bonuses

Abstract

This article deals with the possibilities that Dutch and French civil law and labour law offer to bring about changes in employment contracts, more particularly, the possibilities to change bonus clauses. Both countries use rather different concepts. Where the Dutch law uses general principles and relies on the judge's appreciation of the facts, the French law opts for strictly objective reasonings with virtually no role for the judge other than objectively applying the concepts. However, in a concrete case, the outcome may not differ as much as one might expect on first sight.