page_title: Kingdom of the Netherlands
section_title: Netherlands
hierarchical_section_title: Kingdom of the Netherlands / Constituent countries / Netherlands
context_page_description: The Kingdom of the Netherlands, commonly known as the Netherlands, is a sovereign state and constitutional monarchy with the large majority of its territory in Western Europe and with several small West Indian island territories in the Caribbean.
  The four parts of the kingdom—the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten—are constituent countries and participate on a basis of equality as partners in the Kingdom. In practice, however, most of the Kingdom's affairs are administered by the Netherlands—which comprises roughly 98% of the Kingdom's land area and population—on behalf of the entire Kingdom. Consequently, Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten are dependent on the Netherlands for matters like foreign policy and defence, but are autonomous to a certain degree, with their own parliaments.
  The vast majority in land area of the constituent country of the Netherlands is in Europe, while its three special municipalities are located in the Caribbean, as are the other three constituent countries. The kingdom has a population of 17,737,438 as of November 2019.
context_section_description: The Netherlands is a representative parliamentary democracy organised as a unitary state. Its administration consists of the Monarch and the Council of Ministers, which is headed by a Prime Minister (currently Mark Rutte). The people are represented by the States General of the Netherlands, which consists of a House of Representatives and a Senate. The Netherlands is divided into 12 provinces: Drenthe, Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Limburg, Noord-Brabant, Noord-Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht, Zeeland, and Zuid-Holland. The provinces are divided into municipalities. The Netherlands has the euro as its currency, except in the special municipalities of the Caribbean Netherlands (BES islands), where the Netherlands Antillean guilder was replaced by the U.S. dollar in 2011.
caption: Tree structure of subdivisions of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, showing the geographic location of its four constituent countries