European Databases | de Rechtspraak

The website Rechtspraak.nl was launched in December 1999 and provides a database of decisions and judgements of numerous Dutch courts.

• The judiciary does not publish all decisions and judgements that are pronounced. Special selection criteria were established to describe which judgements should be published, for example, all judgements of the Supreme Court (Hoge Raad), judgements of cases that have received public attention and judgements which are of a case law-forming character.
• You can search for decisions and rulings by keyword, subject, ECLI, LJN, case number or location. The website provides guides for efficient research.


• The ECLI, also “European Case Law Identifier”, is used very commonly in the Netherlands. It is a unique identifier that has the same recognisable format for all courts of the EU and its Member States.
• The ECLI consists of five components:
  1. The abbreviation "ECLI"
  2. The country code (e.g. "NL")
  3. The court's code (e.g. "HR" for Hoge Raad)
  4. The year of the decision
  5. A unique identifying number (max 25 characters)
  For example: ECLI:NL:HR:2021:887


• Rechtspraak.nl gives access to different registers like the trusteeship and administration register, the central insolvency register or the estate register.
• You can also find information about the organisation and the work of the judiciary in the Netherlands, for example that the judiciary counts up to 2.562 judges and councillors and that around 1.37 million cases were settled in 2020.
• The website provides a weekly newsletter with the most important case law news and judgements of the past week. There is also one for administrative law.
• Rechtspraak.nl showcases the podcasts of the judiciary. One of them is called: "Achter de toga". In this podcast the journalist Roel Maalderink talks to judges about topics and dilemmas such as fighting divorces, cybercrime, bankruptcies and the rule of law in different EU Member States.

• Each judgement is displayed on its own page with some additional information, like the date of the judgement and publication, the case number and relevant keywords to the decision. A PDF-file is available for download.
• The documents are published in Dutch.