The Dutch government is to press ahead with plans to ban adoptions from abroad by the end of 2030, deputy justice minister Arno Rutte has said.

The outgoing cabinet has drafted a law formalising the final stages of phasing out foreign adoptions, after new applications were banned at the end of 2024.

The decision came in response to the publication of a highly critical report into adoptions between the 1960s and the 1990s, which uncovered widespread abuse in the largely unregulated procedure, including corruption, forgery and child snatching.

Licensed intermediaries will still be able to match prospective parents who applied before the end of 2024 with children who are looking to be adopted until May 1, 2030. After that date no new matches will be allowed and all outstanding adoption procedures must be concluded by December 18, 2030.

“The abuses of the past have been a painful but clear illustration of the fact that adoption from abroad is not a sustainable solution for the protection of vulnerable children,” Rutte said. “That is why we are carefully winding down adoption from abroad and ending them in 2030.”

Court cases

Eight people who were illegally adopted from Sri Lanka sued the Dutch state in 2023 for negligence and restitution of the money they spent tracking down their birth parents.

Another case originally brought by a Sri Lankan woman, Dilani Butink, in 2018, is currently being considered by the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam after the Supreme Court struck out an earlier ruling against the Dutch state and the agency that handled her adoption.

Some 3,400 children from Sri Lanka were adopted in the Netherlands between 1973 and 1997, most of them through an adoption agency. Sri Lanka has since admitted that most of the adoptions were illegal; many of them were given fake birth certificates or false histories, making it harder to find their original families.

But some adoption organisations have said a blanket ban goes too far. Sanne Buursink, of adoptive parents’ group A New Way, told Dutch News in 2024: “Not all children are able to be placed with relatives or a suitable forever family in their country of birth.”

The draft law will also make it easier for adopted children to restore their original name and access information about their original family from government records.

Formally changing one’s name is currently a laborious process that costs €1,000 for a given name and €835 per surname. The draft law will make it cheaper and more straightforward for a person to change their name by applying to their local council, without having to give a reason.

It will also allow adults to be adopted by their carers for the first time in the Netherlands, creating a legally binding relationship.