Lieutenant General Roger Costongs has held the position of Commander of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee since 27 August 2026. Costongs is also the Governor of the Residency, a position in which he bears responsibility for the military ceremonies in The Hague.
Costongs was born on April 10, 1973, in Maastricht. After completing his education at the Royal Military Academy in 1995, he was appointed as an infantry platoon commander with 13 Infantry Battalion Airmobile in Assen. During his period as an Army officer, he also held positions at the Northern Training Battalion and 17th Armoured Infantry Battalion GFPI. During this period, he was deployed for the first time to Bosnia as a platoon commander of an anti-tank platoon within SFOR-5.
In 2000, he transferred to the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. After retraining, he worked, among other roles, as a Planning and Control Officer within the North Brabant/Limburg district of the Marechaussee. In this context, he completed the Defence Controller Programme in 2003. In addition, during this period he also served as a Public Order Unit (ME/BE) commander with various deployments within the Netherlands. In 2005, as Overall Commander of the Marechaussee,he was responsible for the safe conduct of the visit of President Bush to the Netherlands. A year later, he was responsible for the orderly execution of the tree clearing in Schinveld near Geilenkirchen Air Base.
During his position as Head of Operations of the South district of the Marechaussee, he completed the Intermediate Defence Course, after which he was deployed for the second time in 2008. This time as Deputy Head of Security Sector Reform of TFU-5 in Afghanistan. In this role, he was responsible, among other things, for the development and implementation of the Netherlands Police Mentoring Teams concept. After returning from this mission, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and appointed at Schiphol as Brigade Commander of the Immigration Affairs Brigade. During this period, he participated in his third mission in 2011, again to Afghanistan. Initially as a member of the planning and liaison team J5 for the police training mission in Kunduz, later as LSO Marechaussee in the 1(NLD) Deployment Element.
In 2013, he completed the Advanced Defence Course, after which he was appointed as a senior policy officer at the Directorate-General for Policy in the personnel cluster. After promotion to Colonel, he was subsequently appointed as Head of Future Operations at the National Tactical Command of the Marechaussee.
During this position, he participated in the executive programme Servant Leadership. In 2018, he was appointed at Schiphol Airport as Schiphol Coordinator. During this period he completed the Top Defence Course.
In 2019, in the rank of Brigadier General, he became Commander of the National Tactical Command of the Marechaussee. In this position, he was responsible for the full operational execution of the Marechaussee for 3 years. After promotion to Major General, from December 2022 to March 2025 he served as Deputy Commander of the Marechaussee. During this period, he acted as Commander of the Marechaussee for 6 months.
From March 2025 to March 2026, he was assigned to the Executive Board of the National Police. Here he was responsible for a number of portfolios, in addition to generally advising the Chief of Police as an attached member of the Executive Board.