Post-Brexit: Your European Citizenship in the Netherlands
October 4, 2016
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After the June referendum in the UK and the vote to leave the EU, our private client team in Brussels has been overwhelmed by enquiries from UK citizens living in the EU, all asking the same question: can I apply for nationality in the EU member state where I am currently living? Evelyne Van der Elst has already looked at this question from a Belgian perspective in her blog post Keeping your European Citizenship after Brexit, and in this post, I will turn our attention to the Netherlands, where a post-Brexit information evening hosted by the mayor of Amsterdam recently attracted a standing-room-only crowd.
Dutch immigration authorities have noticed a sharp increase in nationality applications from British citizens –in just a month immediately following the Brexit vote, as many applications for nationality were filed by British citizens as in the entire year of 2015. The number would probably be far greater if nationality provisions in the Netherlands were not so restrictive. The largest barrier to applicants is the restriction on holding dual-nationality, which means that after successfully obtaining Dutch nationality the applicant must rescind their home nationality. Exceptions to this rule are extremely narrow and this means that applying for Dutch nationality is not a real possibility for foreign nationals who have resided in the Netherlands for the required 5 continuous years.
The most notable exception to the dual nationality restriction concerns those who will naturalise on the basis of their relationship with a Dutch national. In general, applying on the basis of partnership is preferential for several reasons:
- the spouse or registered partner of a Dutch national can retain their home nationality,
- the application can be submitted after 3 years rather than 5 years,
- and the application may be lodged from abroad, as long as not from the country in which the applying partner holds a passport (e.g. an American spouse could not apply while living in America.)
