THE HAGUE, 08/01/08 - Only 10 percent of the Turkish and Moroccan men in the Netherlands who married in 2006 married a white Dutch woman. But there are fewer marriages with 'import brides' than there were a few years ago, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) reported yesterday.

About 54 percent of the Turkish men who married in 2006 married a Turkish woman from the Netherlands, while about 27 percent married Turkish women who still lived in Turkey. This is a reversal of the situation in 2001, when the figures were 30 and 56 percent respectively.

Of the Moroccan bridegrooms in 2006, 60 percent chose a Moroccan woman in the Netherlands and 22 percent a woman still living in Morocco. For this group, too, the figures in 2001 were reverse: 30 and 56 percent.

Ten percent of the Turkish bridegrooms in the Netherlands in 2006 married women whose parents were both born in the Netherlands. Another 10 percent married women of 'different origin'. The figures for Moroccan bridegrooms were 10 and 8 percent respectively. For both groups, these percentages were practically the same as in 2001.

The drop in the number of import marriages may be the result of the measures introduced in 2004 specifying stricter requirements for such marriages, according to the CBS. "Other factors probably play a role as well, such as integration and the changing composition of the immigrant population with each generation. Young second generation immigrants prefer to marry a partner who has grown up in the Netherlands as they have, rather than someone from their parents' country," the CBS suggested.