Legislation
Wetten.overheid.nl
Wetten.overheid.nl is the consolidated legislation database maintained by KOOP on behalf of the Dutch central government. Consolidated means it does not show the individual amending act from the Staatsblad but the running text with all amendments already incorporated — split per regulation into successive versions, each with a start and end date. Alongside acts of parliament it holds orders in council and other royal decrees, ministerial regulations, central government policy rules and circulars, regulations of independent administrative bodies and of statutory trade and industry organisations, and the rules of procedure of the States General. For our work the version structure is what matters: a fact from 2019 has to be measured against the law as it stood in 2019, not against today's text.
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What this source does not give you
The texts are not official: by the database's own terms the information does not constitute promulgation within the meaning of the Constitution — only publication in the Staatsblad, the Staatscourant, the Tractatenblad and other official government gazettes has official status. The history is also finite: acts and orders in council are available from May 2002, ministerial regulations from May 2003 and treaties from January 2005, so you cannot retrieve a reference date earlier than that. Municipal, provincial and water authority regulations are not among the regulation types the database publishes, and case law, parliamentary papers and commentary are absent.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I retrieve the text of a law as it stood on a particular date?
- Yes. Every regulation on wetten.overheid.nl has a series of versions, and you select one by supplying a date. The page you get back states which period it covers — for example the label showing the text is in force from 1 January 2025 up to and including 14 May 2025 — and explicitly warns that this is a historical version, naming the valid-on date used. The lower bound of that history is May 2002 for acts and orders in council, May 2003 for ministerial regulations and January 2005 for treaties; for a reference date before that you have to go back to the Staatsblad itself.
- Is the text on wetten.overheid.nl legally the official text?
- No. The database states that its information does not constitute promulgation within the meaning of the Constitution, and that only publication in the Tractatenblad, the Staatsblad, the Staatscourant and other official government gazettes has official status. In practice the consolidated text is the working document and the gazette is the source you cite when the exact wording is decisive. The operator tracks how many legally relevant errors are reported and corrected each year — ten in 2015.
- How quickly does an amendment appear in the database?
- The stated aim is to process at least 95 percent of decisions within two working days of publication and all of them within five working days. For 2015 it was reported that 99.2 percent was processed within two working days. For a change made yesterday that means: consult the publication in the Staatsblad or Staatscourant itself alongside the consolidated text.
- Does it also contain municipal by-laws?
- No. Wetten.overheid.nl covers treaties, acts, orders in council and other royal decrees, ministerial regulations, central government policy rules and circulars, regulations of independent administrative bodies and of statutory trade and industry organisations, and the rules of procedure of the States General. Municipal, provincial and water authority rules fall outside it and have their own repository. Also note the default search setting: regulations that have not been withdrawn or lapsed but no longer have any practical effect are excluded from search unless you tick the option.
- Can I compare two versions of the same regulation?
- Yes. A regulation page offers, among other things, the options to compare with another version, to show the legislative technical information, to view the relationships in LiDO, and to create a permanent link. That permanent link matters most in our work: it pins down the version a conclusion rests on, so a later reader does not accidentally open the current text and get a different answer.