Change Covid rules so that parents abroad can see their kids in NL: Children's Ombudsman

An arrangement needs to be made so that parents who live outside the European Union can visit their children in the Netherlands, according to Children's Ombudsman Margrite Kalverboer. There are children who haven't seen their mother or father from abroad for months and that is "really sad", she said, NRC reports.

Non-essential travel from outside the European Union is currently banned due to the coronavirus pandemic. Exceptions have been made for people who have to travel for work or for "compelling family circumstances", and for people who have a partner abroad. But there is no general exception for fathers and mothers who have a child in the Netherlands.

Children are entitled to normal parent-child contact according to the children's rights convention, Kalverboer said. And making an exception in the travel restrictions for this is easily possible in the European guideline for international travel, the same one used to relax regulations for foreign partners, she said.

Kalverboer could not say exactly how many children have not seen one of their parents since the start of the pandemic, but she knows of several cases. In at least one case Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus of Justice and Security made an individual exception for a foreign parent to come to the Netherlands, she said.