Cedefop has published a collection of articles on long-term international mobility of apprentices in Europe, in cooperation with its ReferNet network. This article focuses on the Netherlands. Like in many countries, the share of apprentices participating in cross-country mobility schemes in the Netherlands is low, extremely low even with only 0.01% of all VET students going abroad. Searching for explanations, possible causes have been eliminated in succession, leaving some likely disablers, but no ‘smoking gun’. The author concludes that some system characteristics hamper the mobility of apprentices in particular.  Efforts of a great number of stakeholders are needed to lower the threshold for apprentices to engage in (long term) international activities.