Taking medicines across the border: certificates, supply and the 90-day ceiling

Whoever uses daily medication moves with an extra file — and with a misunderstanding we can clear up right away: there's no Dutch certificate that covers you "forever". The system is built for travelling, not for emigrating, and that determines your whole approach.

Does your medicine fall under the Opium Act? Then this first

For sleeping pills and tranquillisers, strong painkillers, ADHD medication and medicinal cannabis you need a medicine certificate at the border, to be applied for via the CAK. For Spain, Portugal and France that's the Schengen certificate: you create it online, your (family) doctor signs, and the CAK approves it — count on a week. One certificate per medicine, and watch the duration: 30 days per certificate, a maximum of three consecutively. So ninety days is the ceiling.

For Australia (and stays above 90 days) there's the English-language medicine certificate: valid for a year, but with wet signatures, post and sometimes an extra stamp — start on it four weeks before departure.

What Australia wants to see at the border

The Australian rules are strict but workable, and they apply to everyone with medicines in the suitcase, Opium Act or not: a maximum of three months' supply, in the original pharmacy packaging with label, with your prescription or a doctor's letter naming the medicine and dosage — and everything neatly declared on entry. Strong opioids and ADHD medication simply fall under that traveller's exemption; a small list of substances really may not come in (including dipyrone/metamizole and abortion pills). Whoever declares rarely has a problem; whoever "forgets" does.

The real work: the handover

After those first months the Dutch paper stops, and that's not a shortcoming but the design: from then on you belong to the system of your new country, with a local doctor and a local prescription. Finding a family doctor or prescriber is therefore no chore for "when it's needed" — it's a step in your first weeks, well before your brought-along supply dwindles. Every corridor plan has a step of its own for it.

What makes the handover smooth you arrange at your departure: ask your family doctor for the free copy of your medical file you're legally entitled to (the original stays in the Netherlands), and your pharmacy for an up-to-date medication overview — noted internationally with active substances, because brand names differ per country. With those two documents the first conversation with your new doctor is a handover instead of an interrogation. And carry medication in your hand luggage: a lost suitcase is annoying, lost medication an emergency.