Stefan specialises in employment law and employee benefits. He represents clients in complex and sensitive labour law matters.

An important focus of Stefan’s practice is litigation before the Dutch Supreme Court, where he has represented companies, individual employees, and trade unions in several high-profile, landmark cases.

Stefan regularly works closely with other De Brauw practice groups, particularly in the field of pensions.

In ranking Stefan as a "Star Individual" in 2020 and 2021, Chambers described him as "the most active and prominent employment lawyer when it comes to cases brought forward to the Supreme Court."

Stefan has twice won ILO’s Client Choice Award for the best Employment and Labour Lawyer in the Netherlands.

Stefan’s recent work includes:

• advising and representing companies such as RELX, Schiphol, AkzoNobel, Shell and Philips in numerous collective and individual employment matters (including transfer of undertakings, collective dismissals, collective bargaining, industrial action, co-determination, as well as unilateral amendment of employee benefits).
• Supreme Court proceedings in which it was held that in case of a partial termination of an employment agreement (by mutual consent), the employee is also entitled to partially receive a statutory severance payment.
• Supreme Court proceedings which determined that equitable compensation in case of wrongful termination should not be seen and calculated as punitive damages.
• Supreme Court proceedings on behalf of Shell in which the scope of the statutory obligation to reinstatement (“herplaatsingsplicht“) was defined.
• Summary relief proceedings on behalf of Telegraaf Media Group against an individual works council that opposed the introduction of a joint works council for the whole group of companies of TMG.