An online review in the Netherlands is lawful as long as it reports a genuine experience and does not contain factual allegations that are untrue or unnecessarily damaging. A negative review is not unlawful because it is negative. It becomes unlawful when the reviewer states as fact something that finds no support in the available evidence, and the resulting harm to the business outweighs the reviewer’s freedom of expression. That balancing exercise, not the star rating, decides every Dutch review case.
Two separate bodies of law meet on a review page. The first governs what a reviewer may write: freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, limited by the criminal provisions on insult and defamation in the Dutch Criminal Code and by liability in tort under Article 6:162 of the Dutch Civil Code. The second governs what a business may do with reviews: the rules on unfair commercial practices, enforced by the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), which prohibit fake reviews and require transparency about how reviews are collected and shown.
This article covers both, and sets out what a business can realistically do about a review it believes crosses the line.
Opinion, allegation and the line between them
Dutch courts start by asking what the review actually says. A value judgement, however harsh, cannot be true or false and is therefore protected far more strongly than a statement of fact. Writing that the service was rude, the room was disappointing or the price was not worth it is opinion. Writing that the owner falsified an invoice, that the food caused food poisoning or that the company keeps customers’ deposits is a factual allegation, and the reviewer must be able to point to something that supports it.
The protection of opinion is not unlimited. An opinion that has no factual basis at all, or that is expressed in terms that go further than the point requires, can still be unlawful. Dutch case law speaks of a sufficient factual foundation: the more serious the accusation, the more support it needs. A reviewer who was actually there, who describes what they saw, and who keeps the language proportionate is in a strong position even when the business is furious.
Two further points decide many cases. The first is context: readers of a review platform expect subjective, emotional and one-sided accounts, and courts take that expectation into account when reading the words. The second is proportionality of harm. A single sharp review of a large company is treated differently from a campaign of reviews against a sole trader whose livelihood depends on their rating.
Smaad, laster and belediging under the Criminal Code
Dutch criminal law does not use the English distinction between libel and slander. It uses three offences, and the differences matter.
- Smaad (Article 261 of the Dutch Criminal Code) is intentionally attacking someone’s honour or reputation by alleging a specific fact, with the aim of giving that allegation publicity. Where the allegation is made in writing or in images, it is smaadschrift, which is the form an online review takes.
- Laster (Article 262) is smaad committed while knowing that the alleged fact is untrue. It is the more serious offence and carries a higher maximum sentence.
- Eenvoudige belediging (Article 266) covers insult that does not involve alleging a specific fact, for example pure abuse directed at a person.
The defence to smaad is narrower than most people assume. Truth alone is not enough. Article 261 provides that there is no smaad where the person acted in necessary defence, or could reasonably assume in good faith that the allegation was true and that the public interest required it to be made. A reviewer who publishes a true but purely private grievance in order to damage someone is therefore not automatically safe, while a reviewer who was mistaken but had good reason to believe what they wrote may be.
Two procedural features shape the criminal route in practice. These offences are prosecuted only on a formal complaint by the person concerned, and that complaint must be filed within three months of the moment the person entitled to complain became aware of the offence. The Public Prosecution Service then decides whether to prosecute, and for a commercial dispute over a review it very often does not. The criminal provisions also protect honour and reputation in a personal sense, which is why a company that wants a review dealt with almost always uses the civil route instead.
The civil route: unlawful publication under Article 6:162
A business that wants a review removed or compensated brings a claim in tort under Article 6:162 of the Dutch Civil Code, and the court decides it by weighing two fundamental rights against each other: the reviewer’s freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the claimant’s right to protection of honour, reputation and private life under Article 8. Neither right ranks above the other in the abstract. The outcome depends on the circumstances, and Dutch courts assess them along a settled set of factors.
- The nature of the allegations and the seriousness of the consequences they can be expected to have for the person or business concerned.
- The seriousness of the grievance the reviewer wanted to raise, seen from the general interest.
- The extent to which the allegations found support in the factual material available at the time of publication.
- The way the review is worded, and whether the wording goes further than the point required.
- The likelihood that the same aim could have been achieved in another way, for example by complaining to the business first.
- The reach and permanence of the publication, and the position of the person making it.
The claimant carries the burden of proving that the publication is unlawful and that damage has been suffered. In practice the argument concentrates on the third factor. A reviewer who kept the correspondence, the invoice, the photographs or the complaint that preceded the review will usually keep the review online. A reviewer who cannot substantiate a concrete accusation will usually be ordered to remove it. Our overview of online defamation and reputation management under Dutch law deals with the broader reputational picture, and the differences between the offences are set out in our article on defamation and its variants.
A civil claim in tort is subject to the ordinary limitation period: five years from the day after the injured party became aware of both the damage and the person responsible, and twenty years in any event. For an ongoing publication, each day the review remains online can be treated as a continuing act, but a business that waits two years before objecting weakens the urgency argument it will need in summary proceedings.
What businesses may and may not do with reviews
The second set of rules applies to the trader rather than the reviewer, and it is enforced by a regulator rather than by a court. Reviews are commercial information, and using them misleadingly is an unfair commercial practice under the provisions in Articles 6:193a and following of the Dutch Civil Code. The changes brought in by the European Omnibus Directive, which took effect in the Netherlands on 28 May 2022, added specific obligations for reviews.
Some practices are always unfair, without any assessment of their effect on the consumer. Submitting or commissioning false reviews, whether written by staff, by the owner or by a purchased service, falls into that category, as does misrepresenting reviews or endorsements as coming from consumers who have actually used the product. Stating that reviews are from genuine purchasers without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to check that they are is prohibited on the same basis.
Alongside the prohibitions there are information duties. A trader who gives access to consumer reviews must tell consumers whether and how it verifies that the reviews come from people who actually bought or used the product. That information has to be clear and available where the reviews are shown, not buried in the general terms.
Deleting and filtering
A business may not remove a review simply because it is negative, and may not publish only the favourable ones. Selective publication makes the overall picture misleading, which is precisely what the rules address. Removal is legitimate where a review is unlawful, contains abuse or personal data that do not belong there, is manifestly fake, or breaches the platform’s own rules, and a business should be able to explain the criterion it applied.
Filtering and ranking are permitted if they are transparent. If reviews are ordered other than chronologically, or if some are excluded, the criteria have to be disclosed. The same applies to aggregate scores: if a rating is shown, the consumer should be able to understand what it is based on.
Incentivised reviews
Offering a discount, a free product or entry to a prize draw in exchange for a review is not prohibited in itself, but two conditions apply. The incentive must be disclosed, so that the reader knows the review was rewarded, and it may not be conditional on the review being positive. Inviting only satisfied customers to review, or rewarding only five-star ratings, converts a legitimate marketing tool into a misleading commercial practice. The same disclosure duty applies to influencers and affiliates with a commercial relationship to the trader.
The ACM supervises these rules and has published guidance on the protection of the online consumer, which sets out in detail what it expects from webshops and platforms. It can impose orders subject to a penalty payment and administrative fines; the statutory maxima are laid down in the Instellingswet Autoriteit Consument en Markt and the ACM publishes its penalty policy on its own website. Our article on unfair commercial practices explains the wider framework, and the consumer protection rules in contracts sit alongside it.
Getting an unlawful review removed
The fastest route is almost never the courtroom. It runs through the platform, and since the Digital Services Act became applicable in February 2024 that route has a legal shape rather than depending on a form and good luck.
Notice to the platform
Hosting providers, including review platforms and social networks, must operate a mechanism allowing anyone to notify them of content they consider illegal. A notice has to be sufficiently precise and adequately substantiated: it should explain why the content is unlawful, identify the exact location by URL, and give the contact details of the notifying party. A properly substantiated notice gives the platform actual knowledge of the content, which is what makes it potentially liable if it does nothing.
The platform must confirm receipt, decide without undue delay, and give a statement of reasons for its decision to both sides. If it refuses, its internal complaint-handling system is open for six months, and the dispute can be referred to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body. None of this obliges a platform to remove a review that is merely negative, and platforms are cautious about acting as arbiters of truth between a customer and a business. A notice that simply asserts the review is false rarely succeeds; one that shows why, with the underlying documents, sometimes does.
Summary proceedings
Where the harm is serious and continuing, the practical instrument is summary proceedings (kort geding) before the preliminary relief judge. The claim is for an order to remove the review, usually reinforced by a penalty payment for each day of non-compliance, and it can be directed at the reviewer, at the platform, or at both. A decision normally follows within weeks. The claimant must show both that the publication is unlawful and that the matter is urgent, and must accept that the judgment is provisional: the merits can be reopened in ordinary proceedings.
Where the reviewer is anonymous, the platform can be asked to disclose the identifying data it holds. Dutch case law allows this where it is sufficiently plausible that the publication is unlawful and damaging, where the requesting party has a real interest in obtaining the data, where no less far-reaching route is available, and where, weighing the interests involved, disclosure is justified. It is a demanding test and it is applied restrictively, because anonymity is itself part of freedom of expression.
What can be claimed
Removal is the primary remedy, and in most files it is the only one worth pursuing. Beyond that, Dutch law offers rectification: the court can order the publication of a correction, and it determines the wording and the placement so that it actually reaches the audience that read the original.
Damages are available but are usually modest. Material damage, such as lost turnover, has to be proven and causally linked to the review, which is difficult when a business has hundreds of reviews and many other variables. Compensation for non-material damage can be awarded where reputation or honour has been harmed, and Dutch courts award restrained amounts. For most businesses the value of a claim lies in removal and in the deterrent effect, not in the money. Our article on compensation for non-material damage explains how those amounts are assessed, and civil litigation in the Netherlands sets out the ordinary procedure.
Personal data in reviews
A review that names an individual employee, describes their behaviour or includes a photograph processes personal data, and the General Data Protection Regulation applies to the platform and, depending on the circumstances, to the business that republishes the review. A purely personal or household activity is exempt, but publishing on an open review platform is generally not covered by that exemption.
The practical consequences are limited but real. A named individual can ask the platform to erase data about them, and a refusal can be taken to the Dutch Data Protection Authority or to court. A business that copies reviews onto its own website should think about whether the names of staff or of other customers need to be there. A business collecting reviews must inform reviewers about what happens to their data. Our overview of Dutch data privacy law covers those duties, and the Dutch Data Protection Authority supervises them.
When the reviewer is not a customer
A significant share of the reviews that end up in a lawyer’s office were never written by a customer. Reviews posted by a competitor, by a former employee, by a disgruntled ex-partner or by an account created for the purpose are treated differently from a genuine but harsh customer review, and they are also easier to attack.
A review from someone who never bought anything lacks the factual foundation that protects a real experience, and where it is posted by a competitor it is also a commercial act. Misleading or denigrating statements about a competitor’s products or business fall under the rules on comparative advertising and unlawful competition, and a trader who has staff or an agency post such reviews is exposed on that basis as well as in tort. Where a review is part of a pattern aimed at a single business, the individual message matters less than the campaign, and courts respond to campaigns far more readily than to a single sharp opinion.
Former employees raise a separate question, because a review may reveal information covered by a confidentiality clause or may be the employee’s account of a genuine grievance. Accusations that a business acted criminally require serious substantiation, and a business faced with them should read our articles on false accusations and your rights and on fighting for your reputation. Where the statement amounts to an insult rather than an allegation of fact, the position is set out in our article on insult, defamation and the available legal solutions, and the wider publication rules are covered in our guide to media law in the Netherlands.
Enforcing a removal order
A judgment ordering removal is worth what it can be enforced for. Dutch practice attaches a penalty payment to the order, set per day or per violation and capped at a maximum, which becomes due automatically once the deadline passes. That is what makes removal orders effective against reviewers who would otherwise ignore them.
Two complications recur. The first is that the reviewer removes the review and posts it again, sometimes reworded, sometimes from a new account. A well-drafted order therefore covers repetition of substantially the same statements, not merely the specific URL. The second is the international platform: an order against a foreign-established provider has to be enforced abroad, which is slower and sometimes disproportionate to the harm. In that situation the notice-and-action route under EU digital services law, backed by the judgment, is usually more productive than enforcement proceedings. If a dispute arises about the penalty payments themselves, our article on legal remedies against enforcement of a judgment explains the options, and claims for damages covers the substantive claim that follows.
What to do about a damaging review
The order of steps matters, and the first two are not legal at all.
Secure the evidence before anything else. Take a full screenshot showing the URL, the date and the reviewer’s display name, and keep the underlying file: the order, the correspondence, the complaint, the photographs. Reviews are edited and deleted, and a claim about a review nobody can produce goes nowhere.
Then reply in public, once, factually and without heat. A measured reply that states what happened and offers to resolve it does more for the business than a removal ever will, and it is read by the people the review was aimed at. It also demonstrates, if the matter later reaches a judge, that the business behaved reasonably. Never disclose personal details of the customer in a public reply; a business that answers a review by publishing the customer’s file has created a data protection problem on top of the reputational one.
If the review contains a concrete accusation that is untrue, contact the reviewer with the evidence and ask for correction. If that fails, file a substantiated notice with the platform. If the harm continues and is serious, take advice on summary proceedings. Assess honestly at each step whether the review is unlawful or merely unwelcome, because a failed removal action draws far more attention to a review than the review ever attracted on its own.
For reviewers
Write about what you experienced yourself, and keep the proof. Separate what you observed from what you concluded: describe the dirty table rather than alleging that the kitchen breaches hygiene rules. Avoid accusations of crime unless you can substantiate them. Do not name individual staff members. Disclose any discount, free product or payment you received. And take the complaint to the business first, because the question whether you could have achieved your aim another way is one of the factors a court will weigh.
Common misconceptions
Three beliefs cause most of the trouble. The first is that a review is safe because it is labelled an opinion; a factual allegation does not change character because the word opinion is put in front of it. The second is that anonymity protects the reviewer; platforms hold identifying data and courts can order its disclosure. The third is that a business can simply delete what it does not like; selective publication of reviews is a regulatory problem quite separate from any dispute with the reviewer, and it is the kind of practice the ACM looks for. Our article on what a false negative review can cost sets out the exposure on the reviewer’s side, and five legal mistakes that damage a business reputation looks at it from the trader’s.
Frequently asked questions
Dutch law requires businesses to show only genuine customer reviews and sets clear boundaries on what counts as defamation, with significant penalties for violations and specific legal remedies available to both consumers and businesses.
What constitutes a lawful online review under Dutch regulation?
A lawful online review in the Netherlands must come from a real customer who has actually used your product or service. You cannot write reviews about your own business whilst pretending to be a customer.
You also cannot pay someone to write a review unless you clearly mark it as sponsored. Your website must have a review policy that explains how you handle reviews.
This policy needs to describe how you verify that reviews come from actual customers. You might use account systems or purchase verification to confirm that reviewers are genuine.
You can display review scores, but you must explain how you calculate them. If customers rate products with stars, you need to show how those stars translate into a numerical score.
You must also describe what steps you take to prevent fake reviews from appearing on your site.
How does the Netherlands’ law define defamation in the context of online content?
Defamation under Dutch law occurs when someone makes a false statement that harms your reputation. The statement must be presented as fact rather than opinion.
If someone writes that your restaurant gave them food poisoning when this never happened, that could be defamation. Opinion statements receive more protection than factual claims.
A customer can say they found your service disappointing or your prices too high. These are subjective views rather than verifiable facts.
The statement must also be communicated to at least one other person besides you. Online reviews meet this requirement because they appear publicly on the internet.
The harm to your reputation must be real and demonstrable, not just mildly unflattering.
What are the legal repercussions for posting defamatory reviews in the Netherlands?
You could face civil liability if you post a defamatory review in the Netherlands. The affected business can sue you for damages to compensate for harm to their reputation.
Courts may award financial compensation based on the severity of the defamation and its impact on the business. The court can order you to remove the defamatory content and publish a retraction.
You might need to post a correction stating that your original review contained false information. This retraction may need to appear in the same place as the original review.
Businesses that violate review regulations face penalties from the Autoriteit Consument en Markt. The statutory maximum penalty is laid down in the Instellingswet Autoriteit Consument en Markt and is adjusted periodically.
The ACM publishes its penalty policy and the maxima it applies on its own website.
What steps can businesses take if they believe an online review is defamatory?
You should first document the defamatory review by taking screenshots and noting the date and location where it appears. Gather evidence that disproves the false claims made in the review.
This might include receipts, communication records, or other documentation. Contact the person who posted the review if possible.
Sometimes disputes arise from genuine misunderstandings that can be resolved through direct communication. Many reviewers will remove or modify their review if you address their concerns properly.
If direct contact fails, you can request that the platform hosting the review remove it. Provide evidence showing why the review is defamatory.
If the platform refuses, you can file a complaint with the Autoriteit Consument en Markt or take legal action through the courts.
Are there specific guidelines to follow when writing online reviews to avoid legal issues in the Netherlands?
Base your review on your actual experience with the business. Only write reviews for products or services you have genuinely purchased or used.
Stick to facts that you can verify or clearly label your statements as personal opinions. Avoid making absolute statements that you cannot prove.
Instead of claiming a restaurant has poor hygiene standards, describe what you personally observed. You can say the table was dirty or the floors were sticky without making broader accusations.
Do not use offensive language or make personal attacks against staff members. Keep your review focused on the product or service itself.
If you received compensation or free products in exchange for the review, you must disclose this clearly.
How does the freedom of expression play a role in posting online reviews in the Netherlands?
Freedom of expression protects your right to share honest opinions about businesses in the Netherlands. You can criticise products, services, and business practices without fear of legal consequences.
This protection extends to negative reviews as long as they are truthful or clearly stated as opinions. Dutch law balances free speech against protection from defamation.
You have broad latitude to express disappointment, frustration, or dissatisfaction. The protection has limits when reviews contain false factual statements that damage reputations.
Your right to free expression does not extend to making up lies about a business. You must distinguish between protected opinion and unprotected false statements of fact.
Law & More advises businesses and individuals on online reviews, from a substantiated notice to a platform to summary proceedings for removal and rectification. We also review the way a webshop collects, verifies and displays customer feedback against the rules the ACM enforces. Contact our team to discuss what can be done about a specific review, and how quickly.
