Moving back to the Netherlands: what to arrange in the first months

You are Dutch, you speak the language and you know how the country works. That makes coming back treacherous: you expect a formality, and you get a project. To the administration you are not a returner but someone settling here, with the same deadlines as anyone else who comes to live here.

This article walks through the first months, in the order in which things depend on each other.

Everything hangs on registration

If you stay longer than four months, you register within five days of arrival with the municipality where you will live. Everyone who moves with you comes in person. You bring valid identification and proof that you may live at the address: a rental contract, a deed of purchase or a statement of consent from the main occupant.

The five days are not the problem. The appointment is the problem: municipalities have waiting times, and the government itself advises making the appointment a few weeks before you leave. Ask right away which documents your municipality wants to see, because that differs. The municipality may ask for extra proof that you are Dutch, and for a child born abroad or a marriage concluded there it wants to see the certificate.

Those certificates usually have to be legalised or carry an apostille, and that can only be done in the country where they were issued. So arrange it before you leave. Translation is only needed if the certificate is not in Dutch, English, French or German.

Why this comes first: without registration you have no address in the personal records database, and everything hangs on that. A bank account, DigiD, allowances, and even the customs exemption for your household goods, because the mover has to be able to show your proof of registration.

If you have no home yet on arrival, you can temporarily be registered at a correspondence address, with written permission from whoever lives there.

Your health insurance: four months, and it works back

Whoever lives in the Netherlands must have basic insurance. You have four months after arrival to take it out, even if your foreign policy is still running. If you take it out within that period, it works back to the day your obligation to insure arose. That means two things: care from those first months is covered, and you pay the premium for those months too.

If you wait too long, you get a letter from the CAK. If you then do nothing for three months, a fine of € 529.74 follows, then a second one, and after that the CAK takes out insurance for you itself.

The insurer must accept you for the basic insurance. For supplementary insurance it may refuse you.

Your driving licence has an expiry date

If you come from outside the EU, after registering you may drive for another 185 days on your foreign licence. After that it is worth nothing here. Exchanging is only possible if the country is on the list, and only with a licence that is still valid.

There is one rule that exists especially for returners, and that hardly anyone knows. Did you get your licence in the Netherlands after July 1985 and later exchange it for a foreign one? Then you can exchange it back for a Dutch one. Even if the country where you lived is not on the list.

With a licence from the EU you may keep driving until fifteen years after issue. If it is older than fifteen years but not yet expired, you have another two years from the day you came to live here.

Your AOW gap stays

Every year you lived abroad and were not insured costs you two per cent of your AOW. That can no longer be repaired. Voluntary insurance had to be arranged within a year of leaving, and the buy-in scheme is only for people who were never compulsorily insured before. Whoever was already accruing AOW here before leaving falls outside it.

From your registration you accrue again. The pension you built up abroad is paid out later by that country itself, at its own pension age.

Back without a job

If you worked for a foreign employer, you apply for unemployment benefit in the country where you worked, not with the UWV. Your foreign employment history only counts in the Netherlands once you have worked here again and then become unemployed. The proof is form PD U1 from your last country of work. Request it before you leave.

Your household goods, if you come from outside the EU

From an EU country you move without customs. From outside it you get exemption from import duties and VAT if you lived outside the EU for at least twelve months, owned and used the goods for at least six months, import them within twelve months of settling, and do not sell, rent out or lend them for the first twelve months. The mover makes the declaration and wants an inventory list. Alcohol and tobacco are excluded.

And further

• For the year of return you file with the M form, not with the ordinary return. From your return you declare your worldwide income.
• If children come with you, compulsory education applies right away, from the first day of the month after their fifth birthday. Child benefit does not come by itself: you report your child to the SVB yourself.
• If you have a partner without an EU passport, that is the heaviest part of your return, and the first thing to start on. The ordinary route for family migration applies to that partner, with an income requirement you do not meet without a Dutch job.
• If you hold two nationalities and lived outside the EU for a long time, check before anything else whether you are still Dutch.

Note one word. The Remigratiewet (Remigration Act) sounds as if it is about this, but it regulates the opposite: the departure of people from the Netherlands to their country of origin. Whoever comes back to the Netherlands has no use for it.

The government has its own overview in seven steps, and that is a good start. If you want it set on your arrival date, with only the steps that apply to your situation: that is what the Vertrekklaar return plan does.