Country Update 2022: THE NETHERLANDS

Contributed by: Inge te Pas, Thomas van Houwelingen and Bram van Melle

June 2022

1. Legislative Changes

• Implementation of ECJ Tjebbes ruling (C-221/17), introducing a possibility of retroactively getting citizenship back in case automatic loss violated EU proportionality test.

  
  

• Term for automatic loss of citizenship in case of dual citizenship (in specific circumstances) was extended from 10 to 13 years.

  
  

• The new Civic Integration Act 2021 entered info force. With this new law the level of the Dutch language exams will be increased from A2 to B1.

2. Business Immigration

• The Netherlands continues to pursue their efforts to attract high potentials from outside of the EU. On 1 June 2021 a pilot programme has started to make it easier for start-ups to hire essential personnel from outside of the EU. Required is that it concerns a starting innovative company. Moreover, the employee must earn at least a salary of (currently) € 2543 and the employee must hold at least 1% of the shares in the company.

  
  

• A beneficial policy for Asian cooks has been cancelled as a result of two news articles published in the Dutch media. From these articles, it became clear that Asian cooks who were residing and working in the Netherlands on the basis of the beneficial place were faced with exploitation. On the basis of this policy, it was possible to hire Asian cooks from outside of the EU under favourable conditions, because the employer did not need to prove that they could hire cooks from within the EU. As of 1 January 2022 this policy has been cancelled.

  
  

• The investor permit has been cancelled as of mid-2021. In 2013 this option for a permit was introduced but was barely used.

3. Family based immigration

As of 1 January 2022 spouses of Turkish nationals living in the Netherlands now have to pass an integration exam before they are eligible for a residence permit to reside with their Turkish spouse in the Netherlands. Before they were exempted on the basis of the Association agreement, but now the Netherlands has taken the standpoint that it is allowed to require family members to pass an integration exam before they’re eligible for a residence permit.

4. Asylum

Preliminary questions by the Council of State on February 16, 2022 (ECLI:NL:RVS:2022:505) about the nature of ‘political convictions’,  art. 10(1)(e) Qualification Directive.

5. Citizenship

• On 28 April 2021, the Council of State ruled in this appeal that the Chavez-Vilchez residence right can indeed be considered temporary within the meaning of the Dutch Citizenship Act and that, consequently, holders of a Chavez-Vilchez residence permit are unable to meet the conditions for obtaining Dutch citizenship. A district court referred this matter to the ECJ (Case C‑624/20), as it did not think this was an acte claire. The A-G issued an opinion that confirmed these rights should be considered temporary. We await this case anxiously, as currently holders of a Chavez-Vilchez residence permit must first change their residence permit to a non-temporary one before they qualify for Dutch citizenship.

• The new Civic Integration Act 2021 entered into force. With this new law the level of the Dutch language exams will be increased from A2 to B1. There is no interim law. That would mean that an integration diploma at level A2 would not suffice for a humanitarian non-temporary permit or a permanent or EU long term residence permit or for naturalization requests after 1 January 2022. However, the Secretary of State decided that at least in 2022, one can still obtain those permits or a Dutch passport if someone has passed the integration exam at A2 level.