Deferral of application date for determination of NOW 2 allowance

The Social Affairs and Employment Minister has written to the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament to advise MPs that UWV, the Employee Insurance Agency, is overwhelmed by its current workload to such a degree as to have necessitated the deferral, from 15 November 2020 to 15 April 2021, of the opening date for NOW‑2 allowance determination. The NOIW desk has been open for applications for determination of NOW‑1 allowances since the seventh of October of this year. NOW‑3 subsidy applications can be submitted from 16 November 2020 onwards. (Please note that this date merely concerns the application for (the first tier of) your NOW‑3 allowance rather than the determination of the level thereof.) Current expectations are is expected that the NOW‑3 scheme’s second and third tiers will be available for application from 15 February and 17 May 2021, respectively.

As Social Affairs and Employment Minister, Wouter Koolmees in his letter has moreover announced that a lower recovery limit of 500 euros is to apply to (excess) payments having previously been disbursed under the NOW‑1 scheme. Although recovery decisions will be issued to all business owners having participated in the scheme who have been shown to have received greater allowances than they should have, actual repayment may be dispensed with where recoverable amounts total less than 500 euros each.

Dutch version: Uitstel aanvraag vaststelling NOW-2