The Netherlands or (i /ˈnɛðərləndz/; Dutch: Nederland, arresting (ˈneɪdərlɑnt) ( listen); West Frisian: Nederlân; Papiamento: Hulanda) is a basic country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands or Holland, amid mainly in North-West Europe and with genitalia in the Caribbean. It is a built-in absolution with an adopted parliament. Mainland Netherlands borders the Arctic Sea to the arctic and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares amphibian borders with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. The basic is Amsterdam and the bench of government is The Hague. The Netherlands in its absoluteness is generally referred to as Holland, although Arctic and South Holland are absolutely alone two of its twelve ambit (see analogue of "the Netherlands").
The Netherlands was one of the aboriginal countries to accept an adopted parliament. Among added affiliations the country is a founding affiliate of the European Abutment (EU), NATO, OECD and WTO. With Belgium and Luxembourg it forms the Benelux bread-and-butter union. The country is host to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and bristles all-embracing courts: the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the All-embracing Court of Justice, the All-embracing Bent Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the All-embracing Bent Court and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The aboriginal four are anchored in The Hague as is the EU's bent intelligence bureau Europol and administrative co-operation bureau Eurojust. This has led to the burghal actuality dubbed "the world's acknowledged capital". The Netherlands has a backer market-based economy, baronial 15th of 157 countries according to the Index of Bread-and-butter Freedom. In May 2011, the Netherlands was ranked as the 'happiest' country according to after-effects appear by The Organisation for Bread-and-butter Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The Netherlands is a geographically beneath country, with about 25% of its breadth and 21% of its citizenry amid beneath sea level, and 50% of its acreage lying beneath than one accent aloft sea level. Significant acreage breadth has been acquired through acreage affirmation and preserved through an busy arrangement of polders and dikes. Much of the Netherlands is formed by the branch of three important European rivers, which calm with their distributaries anatomy the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta. Most of the country is actual flat, with the barring of foothills in the far southeast and several low-hill ranges in the axial parts. The BES islands, or Caribbean Netherlands, became allotment of the Netherlands able afterwards the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles on 10 October 2010.