Recording and consent
Recording a session in the Netherlands.
A participant in a Dutch conversation may record it without the others agreeing, and the data protection rules still apply to what is recorded. That is Wetboek van Strafrecht article 139a, and the sentence a practitioner says out loud before recording is the same one in every country on this site.
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
01The sentence
Say this, out loud, before anything else is said.
I am going to record this session so I can write you a proper report afterwards. Is that all right with you?
It is the same sentence everywhere, because a specific disclosure followed by a direct question is what recording guidance favours over a vague notice, and because everybody in the session agreeing is safe in every jurisdiction on this site. What changes by place is who has to answer it.
02Who has to agree
In the Netherlands the rule is one party.
The statute Wetboek van Strafrecht article 139a
Article 139a of the Dutch criminal code makes it an offence to record a conversation in a dwelling or other enclosed space using a technical device, and it excepts a recording made by a participant in the conversation. So a Dutch practitioner recording their own session is outside the offence, which is one of the clearer answers in Europe. The Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens has been equally clear that being outside a criminal offence is not being outside the GDPR.
Ask, and be ready to take the session without recording if the client declines, because that willingness is what makes the consent real. Dutch clients ask that question more often than most, and having an answer ready is the whole of the work.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
The Netherlands sets the digital age of consent at 16. Below that, consent has to come from the holder of parental responsibility, and the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens expects a controller to make reasonable efforts to verify that the person giving it actually holds it. A Dutch practice working with teenagers should collect the parental consent at enrolment and record who gave it.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Uitvoeringswet AVG.
The Dutch implementation act is thin by design, so the GDPR itself is the substance. What is distinctive is the supervisory authority's published expectation that a controller documents its lawful basis before processing rather than reconstructing it afterwards, and its focus on whether a person could genuinely have said no. A recording a client could not have declined without losing the session is one the authority would question.
05What Slide Practice does
The audio goes as soon as the report is written.
At upload the practitioner confirms on screen that everyone in the session agreed. That confirmation is stored, and the footer of the report prints the date it was given.
Session audio is deleted as soon as the write-up is made. The The text of what was said, written out from the recording. stays with the The written page a client receives after a session: what was covered, what went well, what they agreed to do, and what is next., on the client's own page, and both are kept until the account is closed. Closing an account starts a 30 day window, at the end of which everything is deleted rather than archived.
Nothing is drafted from a recording until the practitioner has confirmed that everyone agreed, and nothing reaches a client until a person has read it. The whole of what is kept, and for how long, is on the security page and in the privacy policy.
06Where this came from
Two primary sources, and neither of them is us.
- Wetboek van Strafrecht, wetten.overheid.nl
- Grondslagen voor het verwerken van persoonsgegevens, Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
Nearby
- Recording a session in Sweden
- Recording a session in Poland
- Every jurisdiction, and how permission works in the product
- What the report itself looks like, practice by practice
Bring one recording you already have permission for, and read what comes back. No account and no card.