How to exchange Indian license in Netherlands complete procedure from start to end

How to exchange Indian license in Netherlands complete procedure from start to end

This is a post to shed some clarity about the procedure of how to exchange our Indian license here in The Netherlands.

There is an AWESOME flowchart that I found on the official website of The Hague.

Link to the Flow Chart is here

Please download the link and deduce that if you are eligible for a driving license exchange or not.
Mainly two things are very important

1. Your driving license should be older than 6 months before coming to The Netherlands.
2. You or your partner/spouse should have 30% ruling.

If you don't satisfy these two rules, as per my understanding you won't be able to exchange your driving license.

You will have to go to the RDW website and apply for a new DL for which you'll have to give the theoretical and practical exams.

Enough prologue, now it is time for the actual content.

If you think you are eligible for a driving license exchange please follow these steps.

There are mainly 4 Steps which may vary per Gemeente/Municipality. (Steps are described below)

1. Get a certificate of fitness from CBR website
2. Getting all the documents ready.
3. Take two appointments in your Gemeente for driving license exchange and go there with all the required documents.
4. Take you Indian Driving license back from VFS Global.

Step 1. Getting a certificate of fitness from CBR Website

Go to CBR website.

Fill the Health Declaration and pay the fee you'll get your certificate after assessment. I got mine the next day. I filled my declaration the previous day evening.

Step 2. Getting all the required documents ready

The documents were asked from me on the date of the appointment are

• Health declaration certificate from CBR
• 30% ruling approval letter
• Passport size photo (They have there own specific size Indian passport size photos won't be allowed and not even the visa photos would be allowed. Best to go some local photo store and get your photo clicked and get properly sized photos, let them know it's for DL)
• your RP and Passport

I sent these documents digitally and they printed it out but not sure if everywhere it's allowed. Better to take a photocopy or print out of these documents if possible.

Step 3. Take two appointments in your Gemeente and show up with all the documents

You can take an appointment online for this. But sometimes it's difficult to select the appropriate option from the dropdown, what you can do in that case is call the Gemeente and they will make an appointment with the correct option. After that just show up on the day of the appointment and pay the fee (around 40 euro) for the DL. After that, I received a letter from RDW within one month delivered to my home address asking me to collect the Dutch License from the Gemeente.

Then take the second appointment to collect your DL from Gemeente and you just have to show the RDW letter and you id (RP) and collect the DL from there.

Step 4. Take you Indian Driving license back from VFS Global.

If you got to the Indian Embassy NL website and look into this page.

You'll find a service called "Collection of Indian driving license". So I called them for the same and asked for the procedure of the same. As per them, the current procedure is.

Walk into any VFS Global office in The Netherland (No appointment needed) after 6 months and submit a request of collection of driving license. You will need a copy of your Indian DL. And within 4,6 weeks you will receive the Indian DL in your home address here in The Netherlands. 

That's all folks. Hopefully, this will help people who are struggling to figure out how to exchange Indian License to get a Dutch License.

Let me know if you think there is an error in this post or simply some details are missing.

Link to the official website of The Hague where I found the flowchart here

Note: all the details are of around April/May 2019. So the details may vary. These details are from my personal experience and this is to help you with the procedure. Please double check with the concerned website or authority before actually blindly following this.

Regards,
Sarnendu Mukherjee