A baseline everyone can refer to
Proceedings before the NCC are governed by the NCC Rules of Procedure. There are three editions:
The NCC Rules, in authentic English and Dutch versions, outline the main procedure and practice rules and reflect global best practices (such as the IBA Rules) and many Civil Procedure Code provisions, to create a baseline that judges, lawyers and parties can easily refer to.
Dutch law practitioners are invited to use the Glossary of Dutch procedural terminology
(pdf, 375 KB) to promote consistent standard terminology for Dutch procedural concepts.
The NCC applies the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure which applies to both digital and non-digital proceedings. The NCC Rules (January 2021 text) were drafted under previous legislation and were updated. The Addendum to the NCC Rules (January 2019 text) was deleted.
A third version was needed (July 2023 text) because the NCC’s digital portal (“eNCC”) migrated from servers maintained by the Supreme Court to servers maintained by the Dutch Judiciary’s IT organisation (IVO Rechtspraak) and was redesigned as a result. This means that the changes in these Rules are almost exclusively in Annex IV: the eNCC Rules.
An English-language version of selected sections of the Code of Civil Procedure is available at
Boom Publishers (boomdenhaag.nl) (“Code of Civil Procedure - Selected Sections and the NCC Rules ” – Second Edition).
Substantive law
The applicable substantive law is determined by reference to the rules of Dutch private international law. For substantive law, 'Warendorf Dutch Civil and Commercial Law Legislation' (H. Warendorf et al. (eds.), Deventer, Wolters Kluwer) is a source for English-language terminology.
