The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) published a Practice Direction on October 9, 2025, which will have a significant impact on employment disputes in the DIFC with immediate effect.
The Practice Direction noted a desire to enhance access to justice in employment-related disputes and to create a proportionate, fair, and efficient procedural framework within the DIFC courts.
The key changes brought by the Practice Direction are as follows:
- The general rule in employment disputes is that each party will be responsible for their own costs (although it can make an adverse costs order). This is a departure from the existing court rules, where the winning party can expect to recover some or all of their own costs. It is not currently clear how this will impact settlement offers made in accordance with Part 32 of the Court Rules, where costs protection can be an attractive reason for making settlement offers in accordance with the court procedure.
- Employment hearings will be treated as private hearings, and judgments will be anonymized, which presumably means that hearings relating to employment disputes will no longer be uploaded onto the DIFC Court Website and YouTube. The only exception to this is where the court determines that making the hearing or judgment public is necessary in the interests of justice, including but not limited to (1) public accountability; (2) avoiding prejudice to third parties; or (3) preventing abuse of process.
- The DIFC Court Registry has the discretion upon application to waive or reduce the filing fees payable in an employment claim, having regard to the claimant’s financial means, the complexity and merits of the claim, and interests of justice. Other options available to the Registrar are to cap fees or allow the payment of fees by installment.
These changes are likely to be welcomed by potential employee litigants, who previously may have been deterred in bringing a claim over concerns of the costs of the filing of the claim, or the costs consequences of losing a claim. This may well lead to an increase in employment claims being brought, given the removal of the financial risks in bringing claims.
The change to hearings becoming private and judgments anonymized is likely to be of benefit to both employers and employees. The facts arising from employment disputes often relate to personal actions and reactions, the scrutiny of which in a court judgment can be uncomfortable and may impact future job prospects in the UAE. By anonymizing the hearings and judgments, this enables individuals—whether employee claimants or defendants, or individuals working for companies acting as witnesses—to be able to appear before the court without fear of future negative consequences.
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