Cross-border legal advice is legal assistance on a matter that is connected to more than one country. It answers three questions before it answers anything else: which court has jurisdiction, which national law governs the relationship, and how a decision can be enforced in the country where the assets or the other party are. In the Netherlands those questions are settled mainly by EU regulations, in particular Brussels I bis for jurisdiction and Rome I and Rome II for applicable law, and outside their scope by Book 10 of the Dutch Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek).
Cross-border legal advice is therefore not a separate branch of law. It is a layer of private international law placed on top of the substantive rules of contract, employment, family or corporate law that would apply in a purely domestic case. Ignoring that layer is what turns an ordinary transaction into an expensive one: the contract is valid but unenforceable, the judgment is correct but useless abroad, or a mandatory rule of a foreign country applies to a relationship the parties thought they had fully regulated themselves.
This article sets out what cross-border legal advice covers in Dutch practice, how jurisdiction and applicable law are determined, how judgments and arbitral awards travel between countries, and which obligations arise in business, employment and family matters that cross a border. It ends with the checks that are worth making before you instruct a lawyer and the mistakes that recur most often.
What cross-border legal advice covers
Cross-border legal advice covers every matter in which a foreign element makes the applicable rules uncertain: a contracting party, an employee, an asset, a child, a place of performance or a place of damage located outside the Netherlands. The foreign element does not have to be large. A Dutch supplier delivering to a German buyer, a Dutch employer with one employee working from Spain, or a Dutch family owning a house in France are all cross-border cases in the legal sense.
Within the European Union, the rules that answer the jurisdiction and applicable-law questions are largely uniform and directly applicable. They take precedence over national conflict rules. Where no regulation or treaty applies, Dutch courts fall back on Book 10 BW, which has codified Dutch private international law since 2012, and on articles 1 to 14 of the Code of Civil Procedure (Wetboek van Burgerlijke Rechtsvordering, Rv) for jurisdiction. A broader overview of the practical themes involved is set out in our article on cross-border legal issues.
Three questions decide the outcome of an international matter: which court, which law, and where the decision can be enforced.
Which court has jurisdiction in a cross-border dispute
In civil and commercial matters between parties in EU member states, jurisdiction follows Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012, known as Brussels I bis. The main rule is that a defendant is sued in the courts of the member state where the defendant is domiciled. Alternative grounds allow a claimant to sue in the place of performance of the obligation in question for contractual claims, and in the place where the harmful event occurred for claims in tort.
Several categories are removed from that freedom. Disputes about rights in rem in immovable property and about tenancies belong exclusively to the courts of the country where the property is situated. Consumers and employees enjoy protective rules: a consumer can generally only be sued in the country of the consumer domicile, and an employer must sue an employee there as well, while the employee may also sue in the place where the work is habitually carried out. A choice-of-court clause is recognised, but it must meet the formal requirements of the regulation, and the courts chosen are presumed to have exclusive jurisdiction unless the parties agreed otherwise.
Denmark applies Brussels I bis by separate agreement. For Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, the 2007 Lugano Convention contains a comparable system. For the United Kingdom, Brussels I bis no longer applies to proceedings brought after the end of the Brexit transition period; jurisdiction is then assessed under the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements where the contract contains an exclusive choice of court, and otherwise under national rules. Where no instrument applies, a Dutch court tests its own jurisdiction under articles 1 to 14 Rv.
Parties who want a Dutch forum but not Dutch-language proceedings can agree in writing to litigate before the Netherlands Commercial Court in Amsterdam, which hears international commercial disputes in English and has operated since 2019.
Which law applies to your contract
The law applicable to a contract is determined by Regulation (EC) No 593/2008, Rome I. The starting point is party autonomy: the parties may choose the law of any country, and that choice may be express or clearly demonstrated by the terms of the contract. Where no choice has been made, Rome I assigns the contract to the law of the country where the party who performs the characteristic obligation has its habitual residence, so a sale is governed by the law of the seller and a service contract by the law of the service provider, unless the contract is manifestly more closely connected with another country.
A choice of law does not have unlimited effect. In consumer contracts, a consumer who was approached in the country of his habitual residence keeps the protection of the mandatory rules of that country, whatever law the contract names. In employment contracts, the choice cannot deprive the employee of the protection of the mandatory rules of the country where the work is habitually carried out. On top of that, a court applies the overriding mandatory provisions of its own legal system, and may give effect to those of the country of performance. Cross-border employment questions are dealt with in more detail in our article on employment laws across borders.
A choice of Dutch law does not switch off mandatory consumer or employment protection in the country where the consumer lives or the employee works.
Two further points are regularly overlooked. First, the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, the Vienna Sales Convention, applies automatically to international sales of goods between businesses established in contracting states, and the Netherlands is a contracting state. It applies unless the parties exclude it, which they must do expressly; a bare choice of Dutch law is not an exclusion, because the Convention is part of Dutch law. Second, non-contractual claims follow their own regulation: under Regulation (EC) No 864/2007, Rome II, the general rule is the law of the country where the damage occurs, with separate rules for product liability, unfair competition and infringement of intellectual property rights.
Enforcing a judgment or an arbitral award abroad
Enforcement is where cross-border matters are won or lost. Within the European Union, Brussels I bis abolished the exequatur: a judgment given in one member state is enforceable in the others without a prior declaration of enforceability, on production of the judgment and a certificate issued by the court of origin. The debtor can apply for refusal of enforcement, but only on the narrow grounds listed in the regulation, including manifest conflict with public policy and irreconcilability with an earlier judgment. For uncontested money claims, the European Enforcement Order, the European order for payment procedure and the European small claims procedure offer simplified routes.
Outside the reach of a treaty or regulation the picture is different. Article 431 Rv provides that a foreign judgment cannot be enforced in the Netherlands as such. The creditor must bring a fresh action before the Dutch court, but that court can give binding effect to the foreign decision instead of retrying the merits if the foreign court based its jurisdiction on an internationally acceptable ground, the proceedings met the requirements of due process, recognition does not conflict with Dutch public policy, and the decision is not irreconcilable with a decision between the same parties in the Netherlands. Those conditions were formulated by the Dutch Supreme Court (Hoge Raad) in 2014 and are now standard practice.
Arbitration is often the pragmatic answer when the counterparty is outside the European Union. Under the 1958 New York Convention, to which more than 170 states are party, an arbitral award is recognised and enforced in the contracting states subject to a short and exhaustive list of refusal grounds. In the Netherlands, recognition and enforcement of foreign awards are governed by articles 1075 and 1076 Rv. An award is in practice easier to move across borders than a court judgment, which is why arbitration clauses are common in contracts with parties in states that have no enforcement treaty with the Netherlands. The trade-offs are discussed in our article on cross border disputes.
Check at signature, not at judgment, whether a decision from the chosen forum can actually be enforced where the other party keeps its assets.
Cross-border business, employment and regulatory obligations
Most international matters start long before a dispute. A foreign company entering the Dutch market normally does so through a Dutch private limited company (besloten vennootschap, BV) or a registered branch, both of which must be entered in the Commercial Register kept by the Chamber of Commerce (Kamer van Koophandel), with disclosure of the ultimate beneficial owner. Dutch company law also contains a full statutory regime for cross-border conversions, mergers and divisions within the European Economic Area, implementing the EU mobility rules, including a creditor protection procedure and a pre-conversion certificate from the notary. The general framework is set out in our guide to corporate law.
Employment across borders generates concrete administrative duties. An employer established elsewhere in the EU that posts a worker to the Netherlands must notify the posting in the Dutch online reporting portal before the work begins and must apply the hard core of Dutch terms and conditions, including the statutory minimum wage, working time and holiday entitlement. Social security remains a separate question: an A1 certificate issued under the EU coordination regulation determines which system applies, and it does not follow the choice of law made in the contract. Remote work from another country for a Dutch employer raises the same three issues at once, as explained in our article on cross-border work in a digital economy.
Regulatory compliance travels with the activity rather than with the company seat. Personal data may only be transferred outside the European Economic Area on one of the bases in Chapter V of the GDPR, normally an adequacy decision or the standard contractual clauses combined with a transfer impact assessment. Network and information security obligations now follow from the Dutch Cybersecurity Act (Cyberbeveiligingswet), in force since 15 August 2026, which implements the NIS2 directive and requires registration with the national cybersecurity authority and incident notification within 24 and 72 hours; the practical consequences are set out in our article on the EU cybersecurity rules. Commercial agency is a further trap: an agent working in the European Union keeps the protection of the agency rules, including the goodwill compensation on termination, even where the contract selects the law of a non-EU country.
Questions of taxation, transfer pricing and permanent establishment sit alongside these legal questions but are answered by a tax adviser. Law firms advise on the legal structure; the fiscal consequences of that structure should be confirmed by a tax specialist before the documents are signed.
Family, succession and property in another country
Private international law is at its most technical in family matters. Jurisdiction in divorce and parental responsibility follows Regulation (EU) 2019/1111, Brussels II ter, which has applied since 1 August 2022 and links jurisdiction to habitual residence and nationality rather than to where the marriage was concluded. The law applicable to the divorce itself follows the Rome III regulation, in which the Netherlands participates, and maintenance is governed by the maintenance regulation together with the 2007 Hague Protocol. Matrimonial property relations for spouses who married from 29 January 2019 onwards fall under the EU matrimonial property regulation; for earlier marriages, the 1978 Hague Convention or Book 10 BW decides which property regime applies, and the answer is frequently not the one the spouses assumed.
Where a child is taken to or kept in another country without the consent of the other parent, the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention applies between contracting states, supplemented within the EU by Brussels II ter. Dutch return proceedings are concentrated at the court in The Hague and are conducted on a short timetable, so delay in seeking advice directly reduces the options available. Residence questions for family members follow a different track again and are dealt with by immigration counsel, because admission and residence are governed by the Aliens Act 2000 (Vreemdelingenwet 2000) rather than by private international law.
Succession with assets in more than one country is governed by Regulation (EU) No 650/2012. The estate as a whole is in principle governed by the law of the state where the deceased had his habitual residence at the time of death, unless he chose the law of his nationality in his will. Heirs can prove their position abroad with a European Certificate of Succession. Immovable property is a separate matter: ownership and registration follow the law of the country where the property is located, and disputes about rights in that property belong to the courts of that country.
What to check before you instruct a lawyer
Start with the jurisdictions and the substantive question, not with the label. Cross-border legal advice is only useful if the adviser knows both the Dutch rules and the way they interact with the other legal system involved, so ask which parts of the matter the firm handles itself and where foreign counsel will be instructed, who instructs that counsel, and who keeps the overall strategy. A single point of contact avoids two lawyers optimising their own half of the file in opposite directions.
Check the practical framework as well. In the Netherlands, representation by an advocaat is compulsory in proceedings before the district court and on appeal, but not before the subdistrict court (kantonrechter), which handles employment, tenancy and smaller money claims. Every Dutch advocaat is entered in the register of the Netherlands Bar (Nederlandse orde van advocaten), which is public. Ask in which language the proceedings and the documents will be conducted, whether translations or legalisation are needed, and which limitation and notification periods run in the other country, because those are frequently shorter than the Dutch ones and are not suspended by negotiations abroad.
Criminal matters follow an entirely separate system: surrender under the European arrest warrant, mutual legal assistance and the European investigation order are governed by their own statutes and treaties, and a summons or investigation in another country should be dealt with immediately by counsel experienced in foreign legal proceedings.
The decisive periods in an international matter are usually the foreign ones, and they start running before the Dutch file is opened.
Mistakes that recur in cross-border matters
The most common error is a jurisdiction or choice-of-law clause copied from a domestic template. A clause that names an unspecified court, that is one-sided without being drafted as such, or that combines a choice of Dutch law with arbitration in a state that has no relationship with the parties, creates precisely the uncertainty it was meant to remove. A second error is treating a choice of law as a shield: it does not displace mandatory consumer or employment protection, and it does not exclude the Vienna Sales Convention unless the exclusion is explicit.
A third error concerns language. English-language contracts governed by Dutch law are common and perfectly valid, but Anglo-American boilerplate does not carry its common-law meaning into Dutch law. Dutch courts interpret contracts by reference to what the parties could reasonably attribute to the provisions and what they could reasonably expect from each other, the standard laid down by the Supreme Court in the Haviltex judgment, and an entire-agreement clause does not by itself exclude that approach. Terms such as indemnity, consequential loss or best efforts therefore need to be defined in the contract if they are to have the intended effect.
Finally, timing. Under Brussels I bis the court first seised decides on its own jurisdiction and the other court stays its proceedings, except where the parties agreed on an exclusive forum, so the order in which claims are filed can determine where a dispute is heard for years. Waiting until the enforcement stage to ask whether a judgment can be enforced, or until a posting has already started to check the notification duty, removes the options that were available at the outset. Cross-border legal advice is at its most valuable before the signature, the posting or the writ, not after it.
How Law and More can help
Law & More advises businesses and private clients in the Netherlands on matters that cross a border: contract and forum clauses, international sales and distribution, cross-border employment and posting, corporate structures, family and succession matters with foreign elements, and the recognition and enforcement of judgments and arbitral awards. We handle the Dutch part of the file ourselves and coordinate foreign counsel where a second jurisdiction is involved, so that one strategy is followed across all countries concerned. Tell us about your situation. We will let you know your options within one working day.
