Netherlands

A driver on a Dutch road must hold a licence issued by the competent authority for the category of vehicle being driven. For a resident whose licence comes from outside the European Union, the EEA and Switzerland, article 108(1)(g) of the Wegenverkeerswet 1994 switches that requirement off for 185 days from the day they settled in the Netherlands, and no longer. What happens next is decided by a list. Article 46(5) of the Reglement rijbewijzen allows an exchange only where the licence and the way it was obtained have been designated by ministerial regulation as at least equivalent to the European driving licence directive, or designated as qualifying for exchange on grounds of general interest. The regulation that does the designating names thirteen entries, and they are Alberta, Andorra, Chinese Taipei, Gibraltar and the United Kingdom, Guernsey, Israel, Japan, Jersey, the Isle of Man, Monaco, Quebec, South Korea and Singapore. A second route is open whatever the licence says on it: the regulation also admits, on grounds of general interest, the licence of a holder who can show to the Dienst Wegverkeer that he, or someone in the household he lives with here, counts as an incoming employee to whom the proof rule for specific expertise scarce on the Dutch labour market applies.

Household goods brought by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory enter free of import duties, and the conditions carry the weight. The property must have been owned, and in the case of durable goods used, at the former residence for at least six months. The person must have had their normal residence outside the customs territory for a continuous twelve months. The goods must be entered for free circulation within twelve months of the move, and for a further twelve months after that they may not be lent, pledged, hired out or transferred without telling the customs authorities first. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and trade equipment other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief at all. The Regulation is directly applicable, so the rule here is the rule in every other member state.

Naturalisation in the Netherlands asks for five years of admission and principal residence immediately before the request, knowledge of Dutch and of the country's institutions, and a declaration of solidarity. Two things make it unusual. The five years may be spent anywhere in the Kingdom - the European Netherlands, Aruba, Curacao, Sint Maarten or the Caribbean public bodies - and the period falls away entirely for someone who has been the spouse of and lived with a Dutch national for three years. And the Act requires you to give up the nationality you hold, with four exceptions, the first of which is not about you at all: it is about whether your state signed the Second Protocol of 1993.

Dutch admission law opens by defining who is outside it. A 'community national' is a national of an EU member state entitled under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to enter and reside in another member state, a national of an EEA state with equal rights, or a Swiss national residing under the 1999 free movement agreement - and, in two separate limbs, the third-country family members of the first and third groups. Article 8(e) then makes such a person's residence lawful for as long as they hold it under those instruments. The Netherlands does not grant that residence and cannot take it away: its own Act records it and points elsewhere.

Most countries in this corpus answer the tax residence question with a number. The Netherlands answers it with a sentence that has no number in it. Article 4 of the General State Taxes Act says that where someone lives is assessed according to the circumstances, and stops. There is no 183-day rule, no threshold to stay under and none to cross: a person who keeps a home, a family and a life here can be resident from the first day, and a person who spends most of the year here without them may not be.

Dutch health cover is not a public service you qualify for; it is a private insurance you are obliged to buy. Article 2 of the Health Insurance Act says that whoever is insured by operation of law under the Long-term Care Act must take out, or have taken out, a health insurance against the risk the Act describes. Nationality appears nowhere in it. Who is insured under the other Act is the question that actually decides the answer, and this Act does not answer it.

Whether a short visit to the Netherlands needs a visa is not answered anywhere in Dutch law. Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 carries two annexes: nationals of the third countries in Annex I must hold a visa to cross the external border, and nationals of those in Annex II are exempt for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. What Dutch law supplies is the rest of it. Article 12 of the Vreemdelingenwet 2000 permits a stay for a term fixed by decree for as long as you keep the rules, can pay for both the stay and the journey out, do no work in breach of the Wet arbeid vreemdelingen and pose no danger to public order, and it caps any such term at 360 days. Article 3.3 of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000 then fixes the term itself: 90 days for someone who came for a stay of no longer than that, 180 if the Minister extends it for special circumstances, and eight days for a foreigner who falls into none of the listed categories.

A Dutch residence permit is always granted under one of the restrictions listed in article 3.4 of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000, so that list decides whether a route exists at all. It names nineteen, and eighteen of them turn on something you do, someone you are related to, or a situation you are already in: family, employment, self-employment, a knowledge-migrant job, a blue card, seasonal work, an intra-company transfer, cross-border services, research, learning on the job, study, exchange, medical treatment, humanitarian grounds, and awaiting a decision under article 17 of the Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap. The nineteenth, residence as an economically non-active long-term resident, is the only one that asks for money and nothing else - and article 3.29a opens it to a single kind of applicant, the langdurig ingezetene, which the Act defines as the holder of an EU long-term residence permit. A person who simply has income and wants to live here is not in the list.

There is no retirement permit in the Netherlands. Article 3.4(1) of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000 lists every restriction under which a residence permit may be granted, and none of the nineteen is retirement, pension or means alone. Retirement does appear in the Besluit, once, and it is a concession to the other side of the application: article 3.22(2) says that a family permit is granted even where the sponsor does not have durable and independent means, if the sponsor has reached pension age or is permanently and wholly unfit for work. So a pension can excuse a Dutch-side sponsor from the income test, and cannot of itself admit the person applying.

Dutch work authorisation is written as a prohibition on the employer rather than a permission for the worker. Article 2(1) of the Wet arbeid vreemdelingen forbids an employer to have a foreigner work in the Netherlands without a work permit, or without the foreigner holding a combined permit for work with that employer. The refusal grounds in article 8 are where the route is actually decided: the permit is refused if priority supply is available on the labour market for the post, if the post was not notified to the UWV at least five weeks before the application, if the employer cannot show sufficient effort to fill it from that supply, and if the foreigner would not earn at least the statutory minimum wage over a month. The knowledge-migrant restriction in article 3.30a of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000 sits beside all that and is reached through a recognised sponsor instead. Nationality enters this area in only one place and it is a treaty: article 3(1)(a) disapplies the prohibition where an agreement with another power forbids requiring a permit at all.

The Netherlands has no investor route in its residence decree. Article 3.4(1) of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000 lists the nineteen restrictions a permit may be granted under, and none of them is investment, capital or wealth. The closest thing is self-employment, and article 3.30 makes plain that money is not the test: the permit may be granted to someone performing or about to perform self-employed work which in the Minister's judgement serves an essential Dutch interest, who earns durable and independent sufficient means from that work, and who meets the competence requirements for it. Whether the interest is essential is judged on a points system laid down by ministerial regulation in agreement with the Minister of Economic Affairs, and that regulation may also name activities which serve no essential Dutch interest at all. One variant exists for a person founding an innovative undertaking, who gets a year to meet the ordinary conditions.

A study permit in the Netherlands begins with the school rather than the student. Article 3.41(1) of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000 grants the permit to a foreigner who is or will be enrolled at an educational institution recognised as a sponsor under article 2c of the Vreemdelingenwet 2000, and who at that institution follows full-time higher or academic education that has been accredited or assessed under the new-programme test. Two other doors exist in the same paragraph and both are narrower: full-time secondary or vocational education for which the Netherlands is in the Minister's judgement the most appropriate country and with which the student can in the Minister's judgement contribute positively to the development of the country of origin, and a programme designated by ministerial regulation. The means test is the one place a student is treated more gently than anyone else: article 3.74(2) lets the student norm amount under the Wet studiefinanciering 2000 stand in for the minimum wage.

A Dutch ancestor is not a residence route: article 3.4(1) of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000 lists the restrictions a permit may be granted under and descent is not one of them. Descent does something larger and simpler. Article 3(1) of the Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap makes a child Dutch where the father or the mother was Dutch at the time of its birth, with no generation limit and no count of anybody's days. The limit sits one generation further out and is about residence rather than time: article 3(3) makes a child Dutch in the third generation only where the parent had principal residence in the Kingdom at the child's birth, was themselves born to a parent with principal residence there, and the child has principal residence there too. Beside that, the Act carries an option for people a 1985 rule left out: a person born before 1 January 1985 to a Dutch mother and a non-Dutch father may acquire Dutch nationality by declaration, and so may their children.

Family residence in the Netherlands is granted under article 3.13(1) of the Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000 to a family member described in article 3.14 of a sponsor described in article 3.15, provided every condition in articles 3.16 to 3.22a is met. Two ages run through it: the spouse or registered partner must be twenty-one or older, and so must the sponsor. The income condition in article 3.22(1) asks the sponsor for durable and independent means equal to the statutory minimum wage, and excuses it where the sponsor has reached pension age or is permanently and wholly unfit for work. The provision that depends on where you come from is article 3.15(3): where the sponsor holds an ordinary fixed-term residence permit, the family member's permit is not granted until the sponsor has been lawfully in the Netherlands for at least a year - unless the sponsor falls within the Turkey association decision, the Netherlands-United States friendship treaty of 1956, or the Netherlands-Japan treaty of commerce and navigation of 1913.

The Dutch right to a bank account is in the supervision Act and it rules nationality out in the sentence that creates it. Article 4:71f(1) of the Wet op het financieel toezicht requires a bank offering payment accounts to consumers in the Netherlands to let consumers lawfully resident in the European Union apply for and use a basic payment account in euros, irrespective of the consumer's nationality or place of residence and irrespective of any other ground in article 21 of the Charter. Paragraph 2 says who else counts as lawfully resident: consumers with no fixed address, consumers awaiting a decision on an asylum application, and consumers who cannot be removed for legal or factual reasons. The account must be opened within ten working days. The one ground of refusal the bank has no discretion over is article 4:71g(1): it must refuse where opening the account would mean it could not meet the requirements of the Wwft, and that Act requires the client's identity to be verified from documents, data or information from a reliable and independent source before the relationship begins.