Dutch documents for Ukraine: afschrift, court apostille, KvK extract

The Dutch route looks simple, and largely is — once you know two things. First, the apostille comes from a court, not from the body that issued the document. Second, and less obvious: the Netherlands still does not issue electronic apostilles, so only a paper original can be apostilled — and half of all Dutch documents now exist as a PDF with an electronic signature.

The trap here is therefore the mirror image of the Lithuanian or Greek one. There the stamp is digital and will not meet a Ukrainian notary. Here the document itself is digital, and it will not meet a Dutch court.

Who brings us Dutch documents

• Ukrainian owners of a B.V. — a KvK trade register extract, articles of association, shareholder resolutions for a Ukrainian bank, the tax office or a counterparty.
• A Dutch founder of a Ukrainian company — the registrar wants the parent company’s extract and articles.
• Families — records of births in the Netherlands, of marriage and of divorce, for the Ukrainian civil registry.
• People who worked in the Netherlands — employment and earnings statements for the Pension Fund of Ukraine.
• Education — diplomas from Dutch universities and hogescholen, for recognition in Ukraine and for employers.
• Estate and court matters — death certificates, notarial deeds, court judgments.

The apostille comes from a district court

What to know	Detail
Who issues it	the district court (rechtbank) — the government portal describes it as a sticker the court applies
How many courts	eleven; you may use any of them, wherever the document was issued
What the court checks	that the signature and seal belong to a person whose specimen signature it holds
Form	paper only — the Netherlands does not yet issue e-apostilles
Fee	a fixed tariff revised annually; for 2026 sources give roughly EUR 22–27 per document — confirm on rechtspraak.nl
Enough for Ukraine	yes: both states are parties to the 1961 Hague Convention, so no consular legalisation is needed

The longer chain — issuing body, then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague, then an embassy — also exists in the Netherlands, but it is meant for states outside the Convention. For Ukraine those are two wasted steps; do not let anyone put you on that path “just in case”.

A Dutch court is only one of the models: in France and Lithuania notaries issue the apostille, in Türkiye a governorate, in Romania three different bodies. All twelve countries are collected in who issues the apostille in each country.

The main trap: a digital document cannot be apostilled

The Netherlands has gone a long way in digitising paperwork. A KvK extract downloads from the website as a PDF with a qualified electronic signature; municipal certificates are ordered through DigiD and land in a digital mailbox. For Dutch institutions that is enough.

For an apostille it is not. The court puts its sticker on a physical carrier and compares a wet signature; a file carrying an electronic seal contains none of what the court actually verifies. So the ordering sequence is:

1. First establish whether you need an apostille at all. If the document is going to the Ukrainian civil registry, a notary, a company registrar, a court or the Pension Fund — you do.
2. Order the paper copy. From KvK that is the paid paper extract on letterhead with a signature, sent by post; from a municipality, a paper afschrift.
3. Only then go to the court. The paper original plus apostille then travels to Ukraine for translation.

If the document is for internal company use, a foreign counterparty or electronic exchange, the digital version is fine and the translation can carry our agency stamp. But for filing with a Ukrainian institution there is only one road, and it is made of paper.

Diplomas: DUO first, the court second

A diploma is the one document type on this route with a compulsory preliminary step. A district court will not apostille a diploma that has not been through DUO (Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs).

DUO verifies that the document is genuine and complete, issued on the institution’s letterhead, signed by the institution, and that the programme is recognised by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. Applications are taken by appointment at DUO counters and by registered post in Groningen; current addresses, fees and timings are on duo.nl.

The sequence for Ukraine is: DUO → district court (apostille) → notarised translation in Ukraine. Recognition of the diploma in Ukraine (the ENIC Ukraine procedure under the Ministry of Education) is a separate step on top of translation, and it replaces neither the apostille nor the certification.

Afschrift or uittreksel BRP: which one you actually need

This is the second most common cause of rework. A Dutch municipality issues two different documents, and people order the wrong one.

Document	What it is	What it is for in Ukraine
Afschrift (uittreksel) burgerlijke stand	a copy of the civil-status record held by the municipality where the event was registered	birth, marriage, divorce, death — for the civil registry, courts, notaries
Uittreksel BRP	a population-register extract: name, date of birth, address, BSN number	proof of registration and address; not a substitute for the record

One detail for people who have already left the Netherlands: BRP extracts for residents abroad are issued by one of the 19 municipalities connected to the RNI register. A civil-status record, by contrast, always comes from the municipality where the event was registered — and that can realistically be done by post from Ukraine.

The multilingual (“international”) extract deserves its own note. Municipalities issue it at no extra charge, and for filings inside Europe it is genuinely convenient. Its languages are French, German, English, Spanish, Italian and Turkish. Ukrainian is not there, so for the Ukrainian civil registry it saves nothing: apostille and notarised Ukrainian translation are still required. We have covered the general logic of entering a foreign record into the Ukrainian register separately — foreign birth and marriage certificates for the civil registry; for children the route is wider: a child born abroad.

Why “van der” breaks a filing

Dutch surnames often carry a particle — the tussenvoegsel: van, van der, van den, de, ter, op den. Legally it is part of the surname. Technically it is often held in a separate field or moved to the end: “Jansen, van der”. As a result the same man appears across his papers as “van der Jansen”, “Jansen van der” and plain “Jansen”.

To a Ukrainian registry, pension fund or company registrar, three spellings are three different people. The rule is the same as on every other route: in the translation the surname is written exactly as in the Ukrainian passport, and the Dutch form is explained in a translator’s note. That is why we ask for a scan of the passport or of an earlier translation along with the document: the spelling has to be consistent across the file, not separately “correct” in each sheet. If the discrepancy is already in your documents, the way out is set out in our guide to a name spelled differently across documents.

The KvK extract for a Ukrainian registrar

The Dutch Chamber of Commerce (Kamer van Koophandel) keeps the trade register, and its extract is the commonest corporate document on this route. What matters:

• Form. For an apostille you need the paper extract on letterhead with a KvK signature. The free reference view on the website and the digital PDF are not filing documents.
• The original language is Dutch. An English version exists, but if an institution asks for a translation of an official document, the Dutch text is the source.
• Freshness. There is no hard rule; in practice registrars want an extract no older than three months, and banks want it fresher. Plan so that apostille, translation and filing all fit inside that window.
• Entity forms are not translated. B.V., N.V. and Stichting keep their original spelling, with the legal form explained.

The EU-wide picture — which kinds of extract exist, what gets apostilled and what does not — is in our article on EU corporate documents for Ukraine. This page adds the Dutch specifics on top of it.

What Ukrainian law requires of the translation

Article 15 of Law No. 755-IV requires documents to be filed in the state language, and a document in a foreign language to be accompanied by a Ukrainian translation whose accuracy, or the authenticity of the translator’s signature, has been certified in the prescribed manner. In practice that means notarial certification: an agency stamp is fine for internal use, but not for a registrar or the civil registry.

Dutch is a rare language in Ukraine, and the tariff shows it: from UAH 620 per standard page (1,800 characters with spaces), against UAH 300 for English. Notarial certification is UAH 400 per document and the agency stamp UAH 100. The full list is on our prices page.

Common mistakes

• Hunting for a Dutch ministry to issue the apostille. It is the district court.
• Taking a digital extract to the court. The Netherlands issues no e-apostilles; a signed paper original is required.
• Going straight to the court with a diploma. DUO legalisation comes first.
• Ordering a uittreksel BRP instead of the record. The civil registry works from the civil-status record.
• Expecting the multilingual extract to remove the translation. Ukrainian is not one of its languages.
• Losing “van der” in the translation. To a Ukrainian institution that is a different person.
• Ordering the document too early. Apostille, postage and translation can eat the three-month freshness window.

How we handle it

We start not with the translation but with the question of where you are filing: the answer decides whether an apostille is needed at all, and whether the Dutch original should be ordered on paper or digitally. We then translate from Dutch directly, align the spelling of names and titles with your earlier documents, have the translation notarised, and hand over a set that is ready to file.

For civil-status records that means notarised birth certificate translation and notarised marriage certificate translation; for extracts and articles of association, corporate document translation; for court and contract volumes, legal translation; and when a stamp is needed on a Ukrainian document travelling the other way, apostille and legalisation.

Send us the scans and the name of the institution asking for them, and you will have a quote within 15 minutes.