Losing your Dutch nationality abroad: the thirteen-year rule

There is one rule that almost no emigrant knows, and that can cost you more than any tax assessment: you can lose your Dutch nationality by doing nothing. No letter, no warning, no decision you can appeal against. One day you simply no longer have it, and you only notice when you apply for a new passport.

The rule does not apply to everyone. But if it applies to you, it is the most important thing to remember about your departure.

For whom the clock runs

Three things have to coincide:

• you are an adult;
• besides the Dutch one you hold another nationality, even if you simply got it at birth;
• your main residence is outside the Kingdom and outside the European Union.

If you only hold Dutch nationality, you can never lose it automatically: you would become stateless, and the law does not allow that. If you live in Spain, Portugal or another EU country, the clock does not run either. It runs in Thailand, in the United States, in Australia, in Turkey, in Switzerland and, since Brexit, in the United Kingdom.

How the thirteen years count

Whoever meets those three conditions loses Dutch nationality after an uninterrupted period of thirteen years. Until 1 April 2022 that was ten years; whoever had already completed their ten years before that date does not fall under the new period.

Two things often go wrong in people's heads here.

The clock does not start when you leave. It starts on the date of issue of your latest Dutch passport or ID card. Whoever emigrates with a passport that is three years old has ten years left, not thirteen. A passport is itself valid for ten years: whoever lets it expire and then waits another three years has lost their nationality.

A short return to the Netherlands does not help. The period only counts as interrupted when you have had your main residence in the Kingdom or the EU for at least a year. A summer with family changes nothing.

What stops the clock

Three documents reset the clock to zero: a new passport, a new Dutch identity card, or a certificate of possession of Dutch nationality. From the day of issue a new period of thirteen years begins.

Note that word: issue. The law says the period is interrupted by the issue of the document, not by the application. Whoever makes an appointment in month eleven of year thirteen and collects the passport three months later is too late. And the waiting times are real: the border municipalities and Schiphol, where Dutch nationals from abroad can go, report waiting times that run to months, and between April and October embassies are busy.

The certificate of Dutch nationality is cheaper than a passport and can be requested by email as long as you still have a valid Dutch passport or a valid ID card. For those who rarely use their passport, that is the cheapest way to stop the clock.

The practical rule is therefore simple: renew your passport when it expires, not when you need it. Then you never come near the thirteen years.

Your children

For a child with two nationalities the period starts on their eighteenth birthday. So before they turn 31 they must have a Dutch document of their own issued, and after that again within every thirteen years.

This is where it goes wrong most often in practice. A child who moved to Canada at the age of three, grew up there and holds a Canadian passport does not think of a Dutch document at twenty-five. Their parents often do not either. Tell them, and put it in your calendar.

A minor child remains Dutch as long as it has at least one parent who is Dutch. If you lose the nationality yourself, your minor child can therefore lose it too.

The other way: taking on a nationality yourself

Besides the thirteen-year rule there is a second route to loss: whoever voluntarily takes on another nationality loses the Dutch one at that moment. There are three exceptions. You keep Dutch nationality if you were born in the country of that other nationality and live there when you get it, if you lived there for at least five consecutive years before you came of age, or if you are married to (or the registered partner of) someone with that nationality.

One country is different: if you take on Austrian nationality, those exceptions do not apply.

If you are considering naturalisation, have this looked into beforehand. Afterwards nothing can be repaired.

What is happening politically

The government has announced that it wants to review this automatic loss. That is an intention, not a law. Until something changes, what is written above applies, and whoever bets that it will turn out fine is betting with their passport.

What you do now

1. Take your passport and look at the date of issue. Add thirteen years. That is your final day.
2. Set a reminder a year before that. Not a month: a year.
3. Do the same for every child who holds two nationalities, counted from their eighteenth birthday.
4. Bring all your passports to every passport application, foreign ones included. With every application from abroad it is checked again whether you are Dutch.

For those who do not want to keep track of this themselves: the Vertrekklaar upkeep calendar works out the final day from your date of issue and puts the reminder in your own calendar, together with everything else that keeps coming back from the Netherlands.