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A contact ban against a defendant living abroad

21 August 2026Juriaan de Vries

A contact ban that crosses a border

A contact ban against someone living on another continent can be granted in the Netherlands. On 23 January 2018 the Court of Appeal of The Hague upheld such a ban, reinforced by a penalty payment, against a father resident in the United States. The substantive test is not the hard part. The effort goes into the threshold questions that come first, and into whether the penalty payment is ever collected.

Mother and child in the Netherlands, the father in the United States

On 9 August 2017 the provisional relief judge of the District Court of Rotterdam refused the area ban (straatverbod) sought and granted the contact ban. For one year the man was forbidden to contact the woman and the child in person, in writing, by telephone or otherwise, on pain of a penalty payment of €500 for each breach up to a maximum of €10,000. On his own counterclaim an access arrangement was left in place.

The background lies in the summer of 2016. During a visit by mother and child to the man in the United States, he applied for a divorce without her knowledge. On the form he stated that the child had been resident in the state for more than ninety days, when the true figure was seventeen. A day later he filed an order of protection, after which the child was handed over to him. A United States judgment of 4 November 2016 ordered that the child be returned to her.

The appeal was directed solely at the contact ban. The man argued that the wrong test had been applied, because the judge had asked whether a period of relative calm could be said to be in everyone's interest.

A real threat of future unlawful conduct

The Court of Appeal sets out the test in para. 11. Granting a contact ban, which seriously interferes with the fundamental right to respect for private and family life, requires at the very least a real threat of future unlawful conduct. Whether the ban is then necessary is answered on all the circumstances of the case and with regard to the interests of both parties. In preliminary relief proceedings (kort geding) the requirements of reasoning are lighter and the rules of evidence do not apply, according to para. 10.

Applied to these facts, the Court of Appeal found a real prospect that the man would again try to take the child without permission if the ban were lifted. The interest of mother and child in calm and safety then outweighs his interest in having it lifted. That the ban survived the proportionality test has to do with what it left open. Contact was limited rather than severed: the man kept video calls with the child twice a week and a monthly photograph, and there was no objection to a card or a present.

Four further hurdles where the defendant lives outside the EU

In this judgment the question of jurisdiction never arose; the word does not appear in it. Where a civil contact ban against a defendant outside the Netherlands is assessed, that is precisely where the court begins: is it competent, and which law applies. Anyone who also wants to be able to collect on the ban has four hurdles to clear: jurisdiction, applicable law, service and sanction.

Jurisdiction is the first hurdle. If the defendant lives in a Member State, jurisdiction follows from Article 7(2) Brussels I bis, because the harmful event occurs in the Netherlands. If he lives outside the Union, the ordinary Dutch rules apply, which are what remains when no regulation or convention governs the matter. Section 6, opening words and under (e) DCCP confers jurisdiction where that event has occurred or may occur here, after which Section 102 DCCP designates the competent district court. For the United Kingdom this has been the only route since 1 January 2021: Brussels I bis no longer applies there and the country is not a party to the Lugano Convention. The provisional relief judge in Amsterdam followed that two-step approach against a defendant established in St Petersburg.

The second is the applicable law, and it reaches Dutch law by a detour. Rome II excludes infringements of privacy and of rights relating to personality from its scope, but Section 10:159 DCC declares its provisions to apply by analogy. Article 4(1) Rome II then points to the law of the country in which the damage occurs, and according to the Supreme Court that is the place where the victim has his centre of interests. The rule cuts both ways: where that centre lies outside the Netherlands, it points to foreign law.

The third hurdle is service, in practice the slowest. The writ of summons goes under Section 55 DCCP to the public prosecutor's office and from there, along the 1965 Hague Service Convention, to the central authority, which may require a translation. The notice period turns on the country: four weeks for a European contracting state such as the United Kingdom (Section 115(1) DCCP), and three months elsewhere, as in the United States (Section 115(2) DCCP). The judgment itself must then be served as well, because Section 611a(3) DCCP does not allow a penalty payment to be incurred before that has happened.

The fourth is the sanction. An injunction on conduct cannot be enforced in a country that recognises money judgments only, such as the United Kingdom. The incentive therefore has to be collectable in the Netherlands, either by set-off against a counterclaim or by attachment of assets here. Do not sit on it: under Section 611g DCCP a penalty payment becomes time-barred six months after the day on which it was incurred.

What does this mean for a claimant in the Netherlands?

The way the claim is framed determines whether the ban survives. A ban on speaking negatively in general terms is too imprecise to be granted, because it cannot be established in advance whether a given statement is permissible. A ban on approaching third parties is therefore better confined to defamatory statements.

On whether the ban should reach beyond the channel actually used, the case law is divided. The provisional relief judge in North Holland rejected the argument that a ban should be confined to email, since the defendant could install WhatsApp the next day. The provisional relief judge in Rotterdam refused a wider ban for want of any indication that other channels would be used, and held a blanket ban on any statement to be disproportionate.

That a defendant believes he has a monetary claim against the claimant is no justification for his conduct: for that he must go to court.

The amount of the penalty payment is set by reference to what the defendant can bear. In an enforcement dispute of March 2026 a penalty payment of €75,000 for each breach was imposed, up to a maximum of €1,000,000, partly because the defendant's business generated €15,000 a day on his own lawyer's account. In that same dispute two of the four alleged breaches were held sufficiently plausible, so that €150,000 had been incurred and enforcement beyond that sum was stayed. Anyone who wants to collect a penalty payment therefore records each breach at the moment it occurs.

Frequently asked questions

Can a Dutch court impose a contact ban on someone in the United Kingdom?

Yes, provided the effects are felt in the Netherlands. That the defendant lives outside the Union changes only the basis: not Brussels I bis, but Section 6, opening words and under (e) DCCP. The case will usually come before the claimant's own district court. A defendant who wishes to contest that court must do so before all his defences on the merits.

Why must a judgment with a penalty payment be served twice?

Because the two acts of service do different things. The first brings the defendant into the proceedings. The second switches the penalty payment on: without service of the judgment, none can be incurred. Skip it and what remains is a ban on paper that costs nothing to break. With a defendant overseas, allow twice for the timescale of the Hague Service Convention.

What is a penalty payment worth if the ban cannot be enforced abroad?

More than it appears, as long as there is something to collect in the Netherlands. The ban itself is unenforceable overseas, but a penalty payment once incurred is an ordinary monetary claim. Where the defendant has a claim against the claimant, it can be set off. Do that for each breach and at once, because after six months the penalty payment is time-barred.

Cited case law

Supreme Court

  • Supreme Court 3 June 2016, ECLI:NL:HR:2016:1054 — the country in which the damage occurs under Article 4(1) Rome II is, in the case of an infringement of rights relating to personality, read as the place where the victim has his centre of interests.

Courts of appeal

District courts

Juriaan de Vries — lawyer at Prime Law, specialising in corporate and commercial litigation. See the disclaimer.

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