ISO 3166-2:NL is the entry for the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 in ISO 3166-2

ISO 3166-2

ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , and defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1...

, part of the ISO 3166

ISO 3166

ISO 3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization . It defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions . The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation...

 standard

Standardization

Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....

 published by the International Organization for Standardization

International Organization for Standardization

The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...

 (ISO), which defines code

Code

A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation , not necessarily of the same type....

s for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., province

Province

A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state.-Etymology:The English word "province" is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French "province," which itself comes from the Latin word "provincia," which referred to...

s or states) of all countries

Country

A country is a region legally identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with a previously...

 coded in ISO 3166-1

ISO 3166-1

ISO 3166-1 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , and defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names...

.

Currently for the Netherlands, ISO 3166-2 codes are defined for 12 provinces

Provinces of the Netherlands

A Dutch province represents the administrative layer in between the national government and the local municipalities, having the responsibility for matters of subnational or regional importance. The government of each province consists of three major parts: the Provinciale Staten which is the...

, which cover the full European part of the Netherlands. Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba have a separate ISO 3166-1 code (BQ), but are part of the Netherlands proper and explicitly included in ISO 3166-1 code NL as well. However, they do not fall in any of the 3166-2 codes for the Netherlands.

Each code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen. The first part is NL, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2

ISO 3166-1 alpha-2

ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest...

 code of the Netherlands. The second part is two letters.

Current codes

Subdivision names are listed as in the ISO 3166-2 standard published by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA).

Code	Subdivision name
NL-DR	Drenthe
NL-FL	Flevoland
NL-FR	Friesland
NL-GE	Gelderland
NL-GR	Groningen (province)
NL-LI
NL-NB
NL-NH
NL-OV	Overijssel
NL-UT	Utrecht (province)
NL-ZE	Zeeland
NL-ZH

See also

• Subdivisions of the Netherlands
• FIPS region codes of the Netherlands
• NUTS codes of the Netherlands