Artigo 6.º, n.º 1, alínea a) — nascimento em NL + 3 anos de residência (apátrida)

Article 6(1) of the Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap — the Kingdom statute on Netherlands nationality, whose consolidated text has been in force since 1 October 2023 — lets certain people become Dutch by lodging a written declaration, an optieverklaring, instead of applying for naturalisation. This ground is for adults who were born in the Kingdom and have never had their principal home anywhere else.

As at 25 July 2026 it requires that you are an adult, that you were born in the European Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten or on Bonaire, Sint Eustatius or Saba, that your hoofdverblijf (principal residence) has been in the Kingdom without interruption since birth, and that you hold lawful residence at the moment the declaration is confirmed. Moving between parts of the Kingdom does not break the chain; leaving the Kingdom does.

Unlike naturalisation, an option carries no language or integration examination, and on this ground there is no duty to give up another nationality. It is also far cheaper. The trade-off is that the continuity condition is unforgiving: this is the strictest residence test anywhere in article 6.

O requerente deve satisfazer TODOS OS TRÊS elementos substantivos literalmente: (i) NASCIMENTO EM NL Europeu ou território BES (dissolução pós-2010; nascimentos antilhanos anteriores a 2010 = nacionalidade derivada das Antilhas) de acordo com o artigo 6(1)(a) do RWN - certidão de nascimento do registro civil gemeente; (ii) APATRIDADE continuamente, desde o nascimento até ao exercício da opção, de acordo com o mandato do ACNUR / Convenção de 1954, Artigo 1 + Convenção de 1961, Artigo 1(2)(b) (adesão de NL em 13/05/1985) — ónus para o requerente provar que não adquiriu outra nacionalidade através de qualquer via; (iii) TRÊS ANOS DE RESIDÊNCIA LEGAL CONTÍNUA de acordo com o Artigo 6(1)(a) — residência registrada no BRP com ausências <3 meses toleradas (prática IND Werkinstructie). Processual: optieverklaring arquivado em gemeente (NOT IND) nos termos do Artigo 6 (3) do RWN; taxa 0€; minoria obrigatória no depósito de acordo com o Artigo 6(1)(a) (menores de 18 anos); consentimento dos pais se for menor de 16 anos de acordo com BW Boek 1:233-247. Resultado: reconhecimento declaratório do gemeente seguido de publicação do Real Decreto no Staatscourant. NÃO RWN Artigo 9 requisito de nacionalidade única (a apatridia implica renúncia); NÃO RWN Teste de integração do Artigo 7; SEM barra de caracteres bons (menor).

Principais afirmações marcadas com rota:

• O Artigo 6 da RWN, opção por declaração, fornece 8 motivos distintos (a-h): nascimento+3 anos para apátridas; parceiro+3 anos; Reconhecimento antilhano; ex-holandês +1 ano; enjeitado; — substancialmente mais amplo do que naturali…
• A emenda RWN 2003 introduziu o teste de integração de naturalização (Wi 2007, depois Wi 2013 e depois Wi 2021), verificação de residência mais rigorosa, exceções ampliadas do Artigo 9 para coortes d+e…
• Estatuto O Artigo 3º estabelece a nacionalidade como competência exclusiva do Reino (rijkscompetentie); RWN é rijkswet aplicável em todo o Reino, independentemente da residência do país constituinte…
• NL é ratificador completo da ECN (assinado em 6 de novembro de 1997, ratificado em 21 de março de 2001, em vigor em 1 de julho de 2001) - vinculado pelas obrigações substantivas dos artigos 4 a 7 sobre o direito à nacionalidade, redução da apatridia, não-discriminação…
• Os apátridas têm acesso à (a) opção do Artigo 6(1)(a) do RWN após 3 anos de residência após o nascimento; (b) Naturalização do artigo 8.º com limite reduzido; (c) Obrigações do Artigo 6 da ECN…

• Adulthood. You must be 18 or over, or have been married or in a registered partnership before turning 18 (Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap art 6(1)(a), in force since 1 October 2023).
• Birth in the Kingdom. Birth in the European Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten or the public bodies Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. Birth aboard a sea-going vessel or aircraft registered in one of those territories counts as birth there — a rule that applies to this ground and to the stateless-at-birth ground only (art 6(7)).
• Unbroken principal residence since birth. Hoofdverblijf is a purely factual test: the place where you plainly and regularly stay, where the centre of your activities is. It is checked primarily against the population register, and registration there as a niet-ingezetene (non-resident) counts against you, not for you (Handleiding Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap, version in force since 1 July 2026).
• Lawful admission when the declaration is confirmed. You must hold lawful residence at the moment of confirmation. Admission at birth is not required — a person born here without status who later regularised can still qualify, provided the factual residence chain is unbroken.
• No previous acquisition by option. Anyone who has at any time already become Dutch by option may only use two of the seventeen grounds afterwards: the ground for former Dutch nationals and the restoration ground for disproportionate automatic loss (art 6(9)). This one is closed to them.
• Good character. The authority must refuse where your conduct gives rise to serious suspicions that you are a danger to public order, good morals or the security of the Kingdom (art 6(4)). This is an imperative ground: the deciding authority has no policy freedom.
• Declaration of solidarity. Adults and minors aged 16 or over must be willing to make the verklaring van verbondenheid, a fixed oath or affirmation of respect for the constitutional order of the Kingdom, in Dutch (art 6(2), art 23(2)).

There is no language or civic-integration examination on any option ground — that condition sits in article 8(1)(d) and governs naturalisation only — and no renunciation duty, which article 6a(1) confines to one different option ground.

You must supply a defined set of personal data — names; date, place and country of birth; address; sex; nationalities; present and earlier residence status; length of admitted stay; marriage or partnership and spouse's details; minor children; and anything further the authority considers necessary — and sign a written statement that they are truthful and that nothing relevant has been concealed (Besluit verkrijging en verlies Nederlanderschap, in force since 1 March 2017). The authority may require documentary proof, legalised and where necessary verified as to content.

For this ground in particular you will need a valid identity document, your birth certificate showing birth in the Kingdom, your residence document proving lawful admission, and a population-register history evidencing unbroken principal residence since birth. If the register history is fragmentary, you may ask the burgemeester to consult the municipal administration directly.

Translation. In the European Netherlands anything not in Dutch, English, German or French must be translated by a beëdigd vertaler (sworn translator), preferably into Dutch, and attached to the original or certified copy, at your cost. On Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba only Dutch and English pass untranslated.

Legalisation. Foreign public documents need an apostille where the issuing state is party to the Apostille Convention. In the Netherlands an apostille is a sticker issued by the courts; the Netherlands accepts digital apostilles issued abroad but issues paper ones only. No documents are required from states the Netherlands does not recognise — Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, South Ossetia and Taiwan. Documents already legalised and processed into the population register or a Dutch civil-status record need not be produced again unless there is well-founded doubt.

As at 25 July 2026 the policy manual still points to "the legalisation circular currently in force", but the most recent located version was withdrawn with effect from 1 January 2024 and no successor was identified — confirm the route before paying for legalisation.

You lodge the declaration in person with the authority for the place where you live: the burgemeester of your municipality in the European Netherlands; the Minister of Justice and Security — in practice the IND unit Caribbean Netherlands — on Bonaire, Sint Eustatius or Saba; the Governor of Aruba, Curaçao or Sint Maarten in those countries; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Dutch diplomatic or consular post covering your residence if you are outside the Kingdom (Besluit verkrijging en verlies Nederlanderschap, in force since 1 March 2017). Each authority handles only its own catchment; a proxy is allowed only for compelling reasons. In Curaçao personal appearance is mandatory.

The declaration is date- and service-stamped on receipt and you are given a copy. The authority that receives it also decides it: for option cases the IND is not the decision-maker, and there is no Royal Decree. The sequence is: check the fee obligation before taking the file into treatment; check completeness and request any supplements; test your data against the population register, asking another Dutch municipality to verify within four weeks or a Caribbean authority or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs within ten weeks where needed; investigate residence status and public order.

If the conditions are met the authority must confirm — article 6(3) leaves it no discretion on the merits. It then writes to you setting out how the confirmation will be made known and who is covered, stating at the same time in respect of whom confirmation is refused and by when you may object.

Nationality vests on handover, which must occur within nine weeks of the finding that you qualify (Besluit verkrijging en verlies Nederlanderschap art 60a(7)), and you must make the declaration of solidarity first where you are an adult or aged 16 or over. The confirmation takes effect on handover and backdates to the date it bears — not earlier, and not to the ceremony date. If it is not handed over within a year of that date it lapses by operation of law and you must begin again (art 60a(11)).

The legal deadline. The receiving authority must decide within thirteen weeks of receiving the declaration, and may extend that once by at most a further thirteen weeks — an absolute ceiling of twenty-six weeks (Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap art 6(5), in force since 1 October 2023).

When the clock starts. Not on filing: only once the fee has been received or fully waived and any requested supplementary documents supplied. An incomplete declaration suspends it again (Handleiding Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap, version in force since 1 July 2026).

When it ends. On a positive outcome, at the moment you take receipt of the decision — in principle at a naturalisation ceremony, which is the statutory name used for option handovers too. Because a handover may take up to nine weeks after the authority finds you qualify, the policy manual advises authorities to invoke the thirteen-week extension immediately whenever a ceremony is involved. Treat twenty-six weeks, not thirteen, as the realistic ceiling.

If the authority is late. There is no silent approval. Serve a written notice of default; two weeks later a penalty payment runs automatically — €23 a day for fourteen days, then €35, then €45, capped at forty-two days (Algemene wet bestuursrecht arts 4:17–4:20) — and you may appeal for failure to decide at the same time. Do not assume this regime reaches the Governors' Cabinets in Aruba, Curaçao or Sint Maarten, or the BES islands; those constituencies have their own administrative-procedure law and the point was not established.

Real-world duration. No national processing-time series exists for option cases: the IND records only confirmations and plays no part in handling them (IND, Monitor Naturalisatie en Optie 2018-2024, June 2025). Aruba's and Curaçao's Governor's Cabinets each report an average of six to nine months — observed practice, not a lawful period.

What you pay depends on where you file, and the amounts are fixed separately in each currency — do not convert between them.

In the European Netherlands the 2026 tariffs are €241 for a single declaration, €412 where spouses, registered partners or an unmarried couple in a durable relationship declare at the same time, and €27 for each minor child included in a parent's declaration (2026 schedule; WBN 2025/3, Stcrt. 2025, 31825, in force 1 January 2026). In force on the same date elsewhere in the Kingdom: Aruba Afl. 501 / 857 / 56; Curaçao Cg 502 / 858 / 56; Sint Maarten Cg 502 / 858 / 56; Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba USD 282 / 481 / 32.

A warning specific to Sint Maarten: the Cabinet of the Governor publishes Cg 481 / 823 / 52 for 2026, which does not match the governing instrument. The instrument governs, and underpaying has the same effect as not paying — confirm before transferring.

Payment is in one instalment to the authority that received the declaration, which keeps the whole amount (Besluit optie- en naturalisatiegelden 2002, arts 5 and 7). If it is not paid within six weeks of receipt of the declaration, the declaration is set aside unexamined (art 6). No fee is due from a person treated as a Netherlander under the Wet betreffende de positie van Molukkers (art 4(1)), and the Minister may waive it for a minor declaring on their own account, or for someone wrongly treated as Dutch for over a year through an administrative error — but not where that error was caused by the applicant's own fraud or carelessness (art 4(2)–(4)).

No separate charge is set for the ceremony itself. Whether individual Dutch municipalities levy any local charge around it is not established.

This pathway rests on article 6(1)(a) of the Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap, the Kingdom statute on Netherlands nationality, whose consolidated text has been in force since 1 October 2023 with no amendment in force since (checked 25 July 2026).

Article 6(1) opens by providing that nationality is acquired through a confirmation following a written declaration, and article 6(3) obliges the receiving authority to assess the grounds on the documents put before it and to confirm in writing where the conditions are met. The confirmation is therefore a bound administrative decision — not a discretionary grant, and not a mere declaration that you were already Dutch: it is constitutive, and takes effect on its own date. Article 6(7) equates birth aboard a vessel or aircraft registered in the Kingdom with birth in the territory, for this ground and for the stateless-at-birth ground only.

The rest of the machinery is the general article 6 machinery: article 6(2) (declaration of solidarity from adults and those aged 16 or over, and the bar on making the confirmation known before it has been made); article 6(4) (the public-order refusal); article 6(5) (the thirteen-week decision period, extendable once by thirteen weeks); article 6(6) (fixing of names, with no name change available on option); and article 6(9) (no second acquisition by option). Article 14(1) permits withdrawal afterwards only for a false statement, fraud or the concealment of a relevant fact.

Below the statute: the Besluit verkrijging en verlies Nederlanderschap (in force since 1 March 2017) governs filing, verification and handover; the Besluit optie- en naturalisatiegelden 2002 governs fees; and the Handleiding Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap 2003 (version in force since 1 July 2026) is the binding policy manual.

Case law. The Afdeling bestuursrechtspraak van de Raad van State held on 20 June 2018 (ECLI:NL:RVS:2018:2056) that the public-order refusal ground is imperative and leaves no policy freedom, that a suspended sentence counts as much as an unsuspended one, and that departure from published policy demands very great restraint.

ID da fonte	Citação

Contagem de pinos: 23 — limite de rota de assinatura (≥7) MET.

A refusal to confirm is an ordinary administrative decision, and the refusal letter must state the deadline for objecting.

In the European Netherlands you first lodge a bezwaar (administrative objection) with the same authority that refused — the burgemeester — within six weeks of notification, running from the day after the decision was properly made known (Algemene wet bestuursrecht arts 6:7 and 6:8). There is no fee for a bezwaar (art 7:15), you have the right to be heard (art 7:2), and the review is a full reconsideration of the decision on its merits, not a legality check (art 7:11). The authority must decide within six weeks, or twelve where an advisory committee is involved, extendable once by six weeks (art 7:10).

If the objection fails you have six weeks to appeal (beroep) to the rechtbank. The 2026 court fee for a natural person is €200, payable within four weeks of the registrar's notice; non-payment makes the appeal inadmissible unless you were not at fault or prove you cannot pay. A further appeal (hoger beroep) lies to the Afdeling bestuursrechtspraak van de Raad van State within six weeks, at €297 for a natural person (2026 tariffs; Stcrt. 2025, 39855, in force 1 January 2026). Worst case in court fees, excluding lawyers: €497.

Outside the European Netherlands the courts, fees and currencies differ. Curaçao and Sint Maarten apply their Landsverordening administratieve rechtspraak: objection and appeal both six weeks, NAf 150 at first instance, NAf 300 before the Gemeenschappelijk Hof van Justitie. For Aruba the Court's own guidance gives six weeks, AWG 25 and AWG 75. The BES islands apply the Wet administratieve rechtspraak BES: six weeks to the Gerecht in eerste aanleg at USD 84; the objection deadline there is not established.

Standard of review. Refusal on public-order grounds is imperative. As the Afdeling bestuursrechtspraak put it on 20 June 2018, departing from the published policy requires very great restraint — though departure is required where only that yields a correct application of the law. Whether that formulation has since been restated is not established.

Two things you cannot appeal. The automatic lapse of a confirmation not handed over within a year of its date, and a refusal to hand over because the declaration of solidarity was not made. Neither is a decision in the administrative-law sense.

• One school year abroad can end it. The policy manual's own worked example: a person who spends a school year abroad at 16 or 17 and is de-registered from the population register loses this ground outright. There is no de minimis rule and no discretion to overlook it.

• The absence thresholds. More than six consecutive months abroad is treated as a move abroad unless the overrun was beyond your fault; so is more than four consecutive months for the third year running, unless your centre of activities did not move. Registration in the population register as a niet-ingezetene (non-resident) counts against you, as do tax deregistration for departure, letting out your home and shipping your household effects abroad.

• Absences that do not count against you. Military service abroad and detention abroad, provided you return within six months of the end of either.

• Non-resident registration is evidence against you. Being recorded in the population register as a niet-ingezetene is expressly listed as an indication that your principal residence has moved abroad. So are deregistration with the tax authorities for departure, vacating and letting out your home, and moving your household effects across the border.

• Criminal record thresholds. Only misdrijven count; petty offences, administrative fines and guilty-without-penalty convictions are disregarded. Refusal follows from a custodial sentence; a taakstraf (community service order) of 36 hours or more, or several of 18 hours or more totalling 54; a fine or confiscation order of €900 or more; a settlement or penalty order of €900 or more, or one carrying a community-service condition; or several settlements of at least €450 each totalling €1,350 or more. Suspended sentences count, and an open criminal case for a misdrijf is by itself enough. The rehabilitation window is five years, raised from four with effect from 1 May 2018.

• Names. Where you have no surname or its spelling is unsettled, it is fixed in consultation with you and recorded in the confirmation. Unlike naturalisation, option gives you no opportunity to change your name.

• Often confused with other grounds. This ground is not the one for people who were born here and have been stateless since birth (that is a separate lettered ground with a three-year condition and no age limit), and not the one for former Dutch nationals (a different ground requiring one year of permanent-residence status). If you are unsure which letter fits your facts, ask the receiving authority before paying.

• Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap — the Kingdom nationality statute. Consolidated text in force since 1 October 2023, with no amendment in force since that date (checked 25 July 2026). https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0003738/2023-10-01
• Besluit verkrijging en verlies Nederlanderschap — the Kingdom decree governing who receives declarations, what data must be supplied, verification, and the handover of the confirmation. In force since 1 March 2017.
• Besluit optie- en naturalisatiegelden 2002 — the fee decree. Consolidated text in force since 1 January 2011. The amounts printed in it are 2011 amounts and are not what you pay; the operative amounts are set annually under its article 9. https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0013782
• Besluit van de Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid WBN 2025/3, Stcrt. 2025, 31825 of 19 September 2025, in force 1 January 2026 — the 2026 fee tariffs for the European Netherlands. A rectification at Stcrt. 2025, 31825-n1 of 24 September 2025 corrected an internal cross-reference and changed no amount. https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/stcrt-2025-31825.html
• Handleiding Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap 2003 — the binding policy manual applied by the deciding authorities. Version in force since 1 July 2026. https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBW33099
• Algemene wet bestuursrecht — objection, appeal and the penalty-payment regime for late decisions. Consolidated text as consulted on 25 July 2026. https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0005537
• Regeling indexering, Stcrt. 2025, 39855 of 24 November 2025, in force 1 January 2026 — the 2026 court fees. https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/stcrt-2025-39855.html
• Regeling verkrijging en verlies Nederlanderschap — ceremony rules, in force since 10 October 2010. https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0013506
• Afdeling bestuursrechtspraak van de Raad van State, 20 June 2018, ECLI:NL:RVS:2018:2056 — the leading decision on refusal of an option confirmation on public-order grounds.