The judgment of the European Court of Justice in the case Tjebbes and Others/ Minister for Foreign Affairs concerning automatic loss of Dutch citizenship has been published.

You can read the full text of the judgment here. Read the press release here. 

The European Court does not as such forbid automatic loss of nationality such as stated in the Dutch Citizenship Act, even if this means the loss of citizenship of the Union and the rights attached thereto as well.

However, the automatic loss should remain in line with the European principle of proportionality. This means that the national authorities and the national courts should be in a position to examine, where appropriate, the consequences of the loss of Dutch nationality in each individual case and there should be a means to recover Dutch nationality retroactively in an application procedure for a Dutch travel document.

The Dutch Afdeling bestuursrechtspraak (Administrative Law Division) will continue the cases now for their final ruling. Upon the final ruling we will be able to inform you what these rulings mean in existing loss of Dutch nationality situations.

We will post updates here.

Read more about loss of Dutch citizenship in this article.