The Dutch government has decided to close its embassies in the following cities: Cameroon (capital Yaoundé), Zambia (Lusaka), Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou) and Eritrea (Asmara). The embassy in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam) will be demoted to an economic post. The following Latin American embassies will also close: Nicaragua (Managua), Bolivia (La Paz) and Uruguay (Montevideo).

New embassies will be opened in Panama and South-Sudan. A new consulate general in Western China (Chengdu) will also be opened.

The embassy in Yaoundé will close its doors on 31 December 2011. The consular department has been closed since 9 September 2011. Since this date consular services for people from Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea will be provided by the Dutch embassy in Cotonou (Benin). The Dutch embassy in Khartoum (Sudan) will be providing consular services to people from the Central African Republic (CAR) and Chad.

The embassy in Ouagadougou will remain open until 30 June 2013. The embassy in Montevideo will close in 2012. Uruguayans can collect their mvv's until 30 October 2011. After that date the embassy in Buenos Aires will become responsible for these matters. It is not known yet when the other embassies will close.

The closures will mainly affect those people wanting to submit an application or collect a visa or mvv, as well as those people wanting to take the basic integration exam.

From 1 October 2011 onwards it will no longer be possible to take the basic integration exam at the embassies in Asmara, Barcelona, Montevideo, Quito and Yaoundé.