The Netherlands will no longer allow its citizens to adopt children internationally, the Minister for Legal Protection Franc Weerwind wrote on Tuesday. With this decision the minister responds to the motion passed by the Dutch House of Representatives in which the government was requested to come up with a plan to carefully reduce international adoptions.

The motion was passed for diverse reasons. The Dutch House of Representatives seriously doubted if it would be possible to design a realistic public law system in which abuses of the system could no longer occur. Several malpractices came to light in a 2021 report from the Joustra Committee, with the report concluding that the government had failed to combat adoption abuse. Furthermore international adoption is not a sustainable solution anymore to protect the interests of children, according to the government. The government states that the interests of children are best served when they can be safely cared for in their country of origin.

The topic of international adoption has been a discussion for a long time in the Netherlands, one of the reasons being that adopted children can not discover their origins and identity because of falsified documents and incorrect information in documents. Diverse abuses were being reported, from forcing parents to give up their child to child trafficking.

Practically the decision means that Fiom, the Dutch organisation that arranges international and domestic adoptions, can not accept any new registrations for international adoption. However procedures that have already started will be able to continue for the time being. The intended changes in time demand a changing of the law regarding international adoption, with Weerwind aiming to come up with a plan to gradually dismantle international adoption in September. This plan would need to provide clarity for all the ongoing international adoption procedures.