Since 1813 the Kingdom of the Netherlands has concluded over 6,000 treaties. It has a long standing practice, which took shape particularly after World War II, when international relations became part of the daily life of nations and the number of treaties increased dramatically, and again after the revision of the Dutch Constitution in 1953, when the relationship between the powers of the Government and Parliament regarding treaties was finally established. Current practice is determined by two characteristics. The first is the constitutional provision that, except in certain specified cases, consent for the Kingdom of the Netherlands to be bound by a treaty cannot be given unless the treaty has been approved by Parliament. In practice the rule is interpreted in such a way as to strike a balance between the Government's need to conduct an efficient and effective foreign policy and Parliament's need to exercise proper supervision over that policy. The second characteristic is that, in applying these constitutional provisions (for text see Appendix 1), the term ‘treaty’ is interpreted substantively. Whether an instrument substantively constitutes a treaty is also a matter of interpretation, since international instruments vary so much in form and content that many of them are scarcely covered by the brief constitutional provisions on treaties.