Having recently supported a friend through the process of becoming a Dutch citizen, here are the details that will help you decide whether you can become an EU citizen and how to get EU citizenship. If you decide to go ahead, fill in all the forms and pay the (pretty hefty) fee, here’s what you can expect to happen when becoming a citizen of the Netherlands.
Is it that easy to become a Dutch citizen?
Basically, no, it’s not crazy easy. But, if you’re eligible it’s totally doable.
Have you got a Dutch parent? Or were you born there?
Have you lived for various amounts of time in the Netherlands?
Have you moved there and stayed on your best behaviour for five years? Or married a Dutch citizen?
Boom, you too, my friend, may be Dutch. You can find out for definite over at the Dutch government’s website.
A friend of mine, had actually been Dutch since birth without even knowing it (whoops). She realised long after turning 18 that she was automatically a citizen thanks to her international parents.
It’s the same for many EU countries, so the first step to getting the citizenship is to grab a friend with travel experience for moral support and start sniffing around to uncover the citizenship rules.
How did you get started?
We started by having a family confab as her sister was going to apply too.
Then, it was time to book the online appointment at the Dutch embassy in London. Luckily, this was surprisingly easy and they had appointments almost immediately – not what you would expect with Brexit on the horizon! Never book the last appointment of the day, as they might run late and cancel it. We went for a safe 2pm slot.
If you want to bring a friend, you’ll need to register them as attending the appointment at this stage, because anyone whose name is not on the appointment list won’t be entering the embassy. To do this, move through the online system and select two applicants for the same appointment.
Next, it was time to tackle to forms (yawn). They accept both the online form if printed out and a paper form. It’ll take only an hour of so to fill in the form, which is pretty straightforward.
Can I have both a British and Dutch passport?
You can do this is you have Dutch citizenship by descent and you were born, and have lived all your life, in another country. For example, you were born in Spain to Dutch parents and have spent all your life in Spain.
You’ll have dual nationality for 10 years and then need to re-apply. If you let your Dutch citizenship lapse, you could lose the right to your dual nationality.
What’s special about turning 28?
If you, like my friend were born outside the Netherlands to a Dutch parent, the clock is ticking the moment that you turn 18.
If you apply for your citizenship before 28, you have very little to prove and just a few basic documents.
Wait a year longer, as was our case, and you’ll need to prove where you’ve been living since you turned 18 which means finding papers that are over a decade old. This is where all the time will disappear! Luckily, you only need one or two letters per year to satisfy this requirement.
How did you get evidence to help you become an EU citizen?
A few fantastic places to start when looking for 10 years of official letters sent to you at your home address:
- Student loan statements
- Bank statements (most banks will only keep up to five years of your records)
- Letters from your school or university
You’ll also need your birth certificate and it will need to be apostilled at frankly eye watering expense because it’s a foreign document. This was the only document we got apostilled, despite the form saying that every single piece of evidence had to be treated in the same way. That seemed fine!
What happens in the Dutch visa service appointment?
We arrived crazy early and a my friend was a bit nervous. We went through airport style security and they were all nice and relaxed and bureaucratic. We’d forgotten to print off the appointment confirmation, but we were just waved through after we gave our names.
After that it was time to take a ticket and wait in comfy chairs. I noticed quite a few people frantically trying to fill in the application form right there and then. Don’t do that – I know I said it was easy, but it’s not that quick!
We were called within 10 minutes to a private office. I was really pleasantly surprised by how human and friendly the staff member was. She just laid it on the line. It turned out that my friend had brought far too many papers – she collected only the essentials and refused the rest.
She took the original papers and photocopies we had brought, then had us write the address on the envelope for my friend’s future passport, and the whole thing was over within 20 minutes.
It was swift, painless and efficient. Things did get a little less efficient after that when my friend logged into their online tracking system and it displayed a message saying that she had been sent an email with the outcome of her application. That email was non existent.
It didn’t matter, as her passport arrived special delivery within two weeks of the appointment. Winner!
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