Netherlands May Finally Allow Dual Citizenship After 130 Years

Branko Dijkstra made one of the hardest decisions of his life in 2011: he gave up his Dutch citizenship so his sons wouldn't have to.

When he moved from the Netherlands to Australia in 2005 with his wife and twin boys, he knew the day would come. The Netherlands has forced its citizens to choose since 1893: keep your Dutch passport or take a new one, but you can't have both.

Dijkstra found a loophole. Children under 18 can keep their Dutch citizenship when gaining another nationality. So when his boys were still young, he became Australian first, allowing them to follow while keeping both passports.

"I know what I'm doing in my life, while they are young and they have no idea where they're gonna end up," Dijkstra said. "Me becoming Australian was a way of opening up the whole world for them."

But that didn't make the citizenship ceremony any easier. "It was emotional," he said. "There was a before and an after and it would make a difference."

Dijkstra is one of thousands who have been forced to sacrifice their connection to their homeland. Unlike neighboring Germany, Belgium, and Denmark, the Netherlands clings to colonial-era laws that automatically strip citizenship from anyone taking a second passport.

Often, people don't even know they've lost it. A Dutch Nobel Prize winner discovered in 2024 that he'd stopped being Dutch 13 years earlier when he accepted British citizenship for a knighthood. Dutch footballers recently learned they'd forfeited their citizenship by playing for other national teams, causing a massive "passportgate" scandal.

"It happens by the thousands," said Eelco Keij, president of the Foundation for Dutch Nationals Abroad. "People can find out years later they are no longer citizens."

Getting Dutch citizenship back is nearly impossible. Only 4 percent of applicants succeed.

The Bright Side

After more than 130 years, change is finally coming. The Dutch parliament will debate modernizing its citizenship laws next month for the first time ever.

Of the 195 UN-recognized countries, 120 now allow dual citizenship. In Europe, only the Netherlands and Austria still refuse. The political tide is shifting, even in a country where far-right parties have made immigration reform difficult.

More than 49,000 Australian citizens were born in the Netherlands. If the law changes, many could reclaim the identity they were forced to abandon.

Keij's organization has advocated for years to help people who involuntarily lost their Dutch citizenship. "We think they owe something to people who involuntarily lost their Dutch citizenship," he said. "It's an identity issue."

For people like Dijkstra, who has "never looked back" on his choice, the changes wouldn't undo his decision, but they would honor the emotional sacrifice he and thousands of others have made to build lives in new homes without losing who they were.