Municipalities block renewing passports for people with outstanding debts

Citizens who have high pending debts to their municipalities will not be able to renew their passports. However, Dutch municipalities handle debtors noted as "lost" differently. Some conduct this arbitrary measure often, others less frequently or never, reported the newspaper Trouw.

The mandatory measure mainly affects people who have not repaid their high amount of social benefits to the municipality. In this process, the affected people are registered by government organizations in the passport warning register of the Ministry of Interior. As a result, the flagged people cannot continue to renew their passports at places that issue passports.

The flagged citizens are divided into two groups in the warning register. he first group includes persons suspected of passport fraud, and the second group is composed of persons with outstanding debts of more than 5,000 euros, whose home address cannot be located. The last category includes about 4,000 out of 8,000 citizens recorded in the database in 2021, according to Trouw.

However, the way Dutch municipalities deal with citizens whose debts are still outstanding varies. In Tilburg, for example, 66 debtors are affected by the arbitrary measure and will not have their passports renewed. However, this number is disproportionate to Amsterdam, which is four times larger, where only one person cannot renew his passport, wrote the Dutch newspaper.