Civil justice; petitions and summons 1942-2015

This table gives an overview of the number of judgments, orders and judgments in civil cases in the Netherlands. Civil (or civil) law governs the rights between natural persons and/or legal persons such as companies. Civil cases are dealt with by the courts, courts and the Supreme Court of the Netherlands and start with a subpoena or with a petition. There have been changes over the years that have influenced the time series. For example, divorces were settled until 1-1-1993 by means of a subpoena and since then with a petition. Increases in court fees may also have an impact on the number of cases. The boundary of competence for commercial matters determines which cases are dealt with by the canton sector and which are dealt with by the civil sector. Cases below the boundary of competence are dealt with in the canton sector and cases above this limit in the civil sector. The boundary of competence has changed several times over the years. For example, there were changes in competency in 1970, in 1978, in 1983 and in 1999. The most recent change was made as of 1 July 2011. From this date, commercial matters with an interest of up to EUR 25.000 will be dealt with by the subdistrict court. Before this date, commercial matters with an interest of EUR 5.000 were dealt with by the civil sector of the courts. The result is a shift of cases from the civil sector to the canton sector from the court. Data available from: — 1942 for part of the series; — 1963 for the total number of cases per court. Status of the figures: The figures shown in the table are final figures. Changes as of May 2019: This table was discontinued as of May 2019. This statistic is not continued due to the loss of funding for this statistic. More information on this can be found in paragraph 3. When are new figures coming? No longer applicable.