About Scheers Advocacy

Mr Erik Scheers

Mr Erik Scheers (photo Julien Luscuere)

With more than 20 years experience working in immigration law – as a lawyer at the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND), as a senior (staff)lawyer at the Aliens Division of the Amsterdam Court and as a senior lawyer at the specialized immigration law office Everaert Lawyers  -, in early 2017 Erik Scheers decided to start his own law firm: Scheers Advocacy (Scheers Advocatuur).

Immigration lawyer

Scheers Advocacy brings added value through specialization in regular Dutch and European immigration law and penalty (fines) proceedings under the Foreign Nationals Employment Act (Wet arbeid vreemdelingen, Wav). This means that these specific areas of the law, which are continuously developing, get full attention.

Scheers Advocacy thoroughly monitors new developments in these jurisdictions, maintains excellent contacts in the field and ensures that its expertise is up to date. Erik Scheers’ knowledge of immigration law, experience and contacts come from all angles (360 degrees). As a lawyer at the IND he represented the Minister / Secretary of State; as a senior (staff) lawyer in the Aliens Division of the Amsterdam Court he was concerned with the immigration law policy, he was the chairman of the judges-meetings and as a secretary he was concerned with the complex immigration-cases. At Everaert Advocacy, as a senior associate, he was thé litigation lawyer, senior specialist in European migration law and Wav penalty proceedings as well as head of the employer’s sanctions department.

Erik Scheers has registered the immigration law practice area in the Netherlands Bar’s register of legal practice areas (rechtsgebiedenregister) and based on this registration, he is required to obtain (at least) ten training credits per calendar year in this registered legal practice area in accordance with the standards set by the Netherlands Bar.

As a specialist lawyer the aim is to prevent law-procedures, however, when necessary, all procedures will be guided through the highest national and European Courts. This has already led to many pioneering successes, the outcome of which has often not only had positive impact on his clients, but also on Dutch immigration-policy and practice.

  • As a lawyer he was involved in a case at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg which resulted in many cross-border service providers no longer needing work permits and the penalties for illegal employment were reversed. See also the news articles on this subject in the Dutch media het Financieele Dagblad (Fd), de Trouw and de Volkskrant.;
  • He successfully represented non-EU family members of Dutch cross-border and EU-route workers as a lawyer  in preliminary-ruling proceedings at the EU-Court, with a very favorable outcome for not only his client, but also the many other (non-EU family members of) cross-border workers in similar situations;
  • In appeal proceedings before the Council of State he successfully argued that the strict policy on residence gaps for applicants for permanent residence permits is contrary to European law, the result of which the national law was determined to be inapplicable. The Dutch law has been positively adjusted based on this decision;
  • In several cases he convinced the IND/ the Court as a lawyer of his clients that the requirement for highly-skilled migrants’ salaries to conform to market standards should not be enforced;
  • Of several non-European partners of EU citizens whose residence permits were withdrawn after divorce or death of their EU-partner, has afterwards been established that they have an independent right of residence;
  • For many clients Erik Scheers has as a lawyer succeeded in having penalties for illegal employment reversed or reduced. Here you can find more informatie about the results Erik achieved.


Other information

Erik lectures about the Foreign Nationals (Employment) Act and frequently writes about employment and family migration in professional journals and popular media.

Contribution to the bundle “Text and notes Modern Migration-policy”

Since 2012 Erik is “the fastest lawyer”

Publications

For a list of publications in Dutch please refer to the Dutch profile page.


Memberships and other positions

SVMA – – Specialist Association for Migration Attorneys

NCJM – Netherlands Committee of Jurists for Human Rights

WRV – Legal aid in alien affairs working group

VAR – Administrative Law Association

NVER – Netherlands Association for European Law.

NOvA – Dutch Bar Association