What a trade office can and cannot do for your landing

A trade office gives information, introductions and sometimes a desk or a subsidy, and it is usually free. What it does not do is legal or tax advice, permits, or acting as your commercial agent. The Dutch agency says so on the government's own business portal, and the offices in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore draw the line in a similar place.

Every founder moving a company to Europe meets a trade office early, and often several: one at home whose job is to help national companies go out, one in the destination country whose job is to bring foreign companies in. Both are usually free, and both are routinely misread in opposite directions, either dismissed as ceremonial or treated as an arrangement that will take the whole move off your hands.

Neither reading survives contact with what these bodies publish about their own remit. It is worth reading before the first meeting, because it tells you which half of the work you have just been given for nothing, and which half you still have to buy.

What a trade office actually gives you, even when it costs nothing

The product is access and orientation. On the Dutch side, business.gov.nl describes the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency as helping and advising foreign companies on establishing and growing their activities here: information about setting up, sector and regional information, introductions to the organisations that decide things, and a connection to the regional development agency for the area in play. The agency's report to parliament states that its service is free of charge.

That sounds thin written down and is not thin in practice. A founder abroad is trying to answer questions that have no public answer: which region actually works on this technology, who at the tax office handles this kind of case, whether a permit is a formality or a year. A warm introduction gets those answers in one call rather than four months.

The same shape appears at home. JETRO publishes free trade and investment consultation for Japanese companies and free briefings from its overseas offices, with incorporation procedures among the listed topics. Startup Terrace, under Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs, selected ten Taiwanese startups for its 2026 GO Europe cohort with a subsidy of NTD 100,000 each.

Sources:
Business.gov.nl, Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency
Rijksoverheid, Terugblik 2025: resultaten NFIA en Invest in Holland (in Dutch)
Startup Terrace, GO Europe admission announcement, 2026

The line is drawn in the same place nearly everywhere

Here is the sentence to memorise, because it is the whole essay in three clauses. Business.gov.nl states that the NFIA does not provide legal or tax advice, that it does not arrange any permits, and that it does not act as a commercial agent.

Each clause removes a different assumption. No legal or tax advice means the agency can tell you the innovation box exists and cannot tell you whether you qualify. No permits means it can explain the recognised sponsor route and cannot file the application. Not a commercial agent means it will not sell on your behalf, negotiate your lease, or introduce you as its client.

Its report to parliament adds two boundaries in the same spirit. It works only for companies with substance, meaning companies that create employment and added value, so it does not support letterbox companies. And it performs no gatekeeper function: it is not deciding who is allowed to come, which is why its enthusiasm is not a verdict on your plan.

Source: Business.gov.nl, Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency

Free does not mean unlimited, and it does not always mean free

The word free travels badly between languages and systems, and this is where plans slip.

KOTRA is the clearest illustration. Its free-of-charge language applies to foreign investors coming into Korea. For Korean companies going out, KOTRA publishes an annual service guidebook with prices for buyer discovery, market research and its overseas branch service. The free element is real but bounded: the open trade office desk, capped at five business days. A founder who budgets for a free landing base in Amsterdam on the strength of the word free has budgeted wrong.

JETRO draws it differently again. Consultation and briefings are free, trade fair participation is subsidised rather than free, and its Global Acceleration Hub is free and metered, with published caps on mentoring hours, partner introductions and months of co-working space.

None of this is hidden. It is published in the language of the home country, and English summaries tend to lose the caps.

Sources:
KOTRA, About KOTRA
JETRO, Services for companies expanding overseas

The offices are rarely where the map suggests

A quieter problem is geography. Founders assume that if two countries trade, both governments have someone on the ground in the other. Often they do not, and the gap falls in surprising places.

Korea's K-Startup Center network for startups going abroad has hubs in Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Paris, Singapore, Hanoi and Seattle. In Europe that means Paris, and no centre in the Netherlands. Enterprise Singapore has no overseas centre here either, and Singapore's ambassador to the Netherlands sits in Brussels, yet Singapore runs two Global Innovation Alliance nodes in Amsterdam and Eindhoven through private partners rather than a government desk.

The Dutch side is more even, because the NFIA's twenty-five overseas offices sit inside Dutch embassies and consulates. Check per country rather than assume symmetry: the country pages here set out who is actually where, starting with Korean companies in the Netherlands.

Sources:
KISED, K-Startup Center (in Korean)
Enterprise Singapore, Global Innovation Alliance

What is left is the part that carries liability

Strip out what the trade offices do and the remainder has a pattern. Everything that binds the company, or that someone can be held responsible for, stays with you and with people you pay.

The deed that creates the Dutch company is signed by a civil-law notary. The payroll registration is your filing. The permit applications are your applications, and the highly skilled migrant route needs your company to be a recognised sponsor first. The bank decides on you, not on the agency that introduced you. The tax position is an opinion someone signs. None of that is a failure of the free help: it is what the free help is designed to sit in front of.

That is why the first weeks have an order of their own, set out in the first ninety days in the Netherlands, and why the Dutch agency is described separately in what the NFIA does for foreign companies.

How to use the free half well

Three habits get more out of it than anything else.

Arrive with something concrete. These agencies work on investment projects, so a company that can say what it makes, which part would sit in Europe, roughly how many people and roughly when will get a different meeting from one that asks what the Netherlands is like.

Ask for introductions rather than answers. The scarce thing an agency holds is not information, which is mostly published, but access to the person who decides your case.

And never let a good meeting substitute for the paid work. Enthusiasm from a national agency is not an approval, a permit, or a bank account.

Sources

1. Business.gov.nl, Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, checked 22 September 2026
2. Rijksoverheid, Terugblik 2025: resultaten NFIA en Invest in Holland (in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
3. KOTRA, About KOTRA, checked 22 September 2026
4. JETRO, Business support activities, checked 22 September 2026
5. KISED, K-Startup Center (in Korean), checked 22 September 2026
6. Enterprise Singapore, Global Innovation Alliance, checked 22 September 2026
7. Startup Terrace, GO Europe admission announcement, 2026, checked 22 September 2026

Checked on 22 September 2026. This page is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change: check the official source, or ask an adviser, before you act on it.