Dutch has a full passive voice used in formal writing, news, and everyday speech. The worden passive expresses an action in progress or a one-time event: “De brief wordt geschreven” (The letter is being written). It is formed with worden (conjugated) + past participle at the end. The zijn passive expresses a resulting state: “De brief is geschreven” (The letter is written — it exists in a written state). Getting this distinction right marks an advanced learner.
The agent (the person doing the action) is expressed with door: “Het huis wordt door de architect ontworpen” (The house is being designed by the architect). In Dutch, the passive is often used without mentioning an agent at all, which is extremely common in official language: “Er wordt gevraagd om stilte” (Silence is requested). The impersonal er subject is characteristic of Dutch passive constructions with no specific agent.
In the perfect tense, the worden passive uses zijn as auxiliary: “De brief is geschreven” — this looks identical to the zijn-passive (state), so context determines interpretation. The imperfect passive: “De brief werd geschreven” (The letter was being written). Passive constructions appear everywhere in formal Dutch — government websites, newspapers, instructions, and legal documents — so recognizing them is essential for reading comprehension even if you rarely use them in speech.