44. The accession of the Netherlands to the UN Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and their Property
On 3 February 2022, the government sent the bill for a Kingdom Act approving the United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property (New York, 2 December 2004) to the House of Representatives. Following the plenary debate on the bill in the House of Representatives, the Minister of Foreign Affairs asked the Advisory Committee on Issues of Public International Law (CAVV) to prepare an advisory report outlining its views on the accession of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN Convention.
[This advisory report has been published on December 22, 2023. The English translation has been available since March 25, 2024.]
The Minister of Foreign Affairs asked the CAVV to prepare an advisory report outlining its views on the accession of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN Convention, in particular in the light of and including an assessment of:
(a) how the amendment proposed by Democrats ’66 (D66), the Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid) and the Green Left Alliance (GroenLinks) on making a reservation to article 11, paragraph 2 (c) and (d) of the UN Convention relates to the Netherlands’ other obligations under international law, in particular under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations;
(b) the risks arising from differences in interpretation between courts in States Parties to the UN Convention, in particular regarding the term ‘commercial purposes’ in articles 18 and 19 of the Convention, and whether the Netherlands should make a declaration or reservation in respect of these articles as a result of these risks; and
(c) the international debate on the confiscation of Russian assets and, in this context, the relationship between their confiscation and state immunity.
The report is organised as follows. By way of introduction, the CAVV briefly discusses the possibility and consequences of making reservations and (interpretative) declarations in respect of the UN Convention (section 1). It then answers the three questions posed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding article 11 of the Convention (section 2), articles 18 and 19 of the Convention (section 3) and the confiscation of foreign state assets (section 4). The report ends with concluding remarks and a summary of the CAVV’s advice (section 5).