Foreign birth and marriage documents : the voice of Belgian and Dutch public servants

In 2019, the Institute of Private International Law at Ghent University (Belgium) launched a bilingual (Dutch/French) online survey in Belgium and the Netherlands. The objective of the survey was to examine how Belgian and Dutch public servants deal with foreign documents that record the personal status of people. Thanks to the cooperation of the Belgian and Dutch associations of registrars (Vlavabbs, Gapec and NVVB), the Belgian Immigration Office (DVZ/OE), the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND), the Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it was possible to use and analyse the data of 219 respondents. This article elaborates on the Belgian and Dutch rules on the recognition of foreign marriage and birth certificates, and explores how those rules are (not) applied in practice by examining the results of the survey