The Rule of Law in the Netherlands in Crisis?
| Published date | 01 June 2005 |
| Date | 01 June 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/016934410502300201 |
| Subject Matter | Column |
THE RULE OF LAW IN THE NETHERLANDS
IN CRISIS?*
In February of this year I took part in a meeting of Dutch senior police officers with
Britta Bo
¨hler, a criminal lawyer, well-known in Dutch society. She is more or less
specialised in what one might call political cases and has defended, among other
people, Abdullah O
¨calan, the former leader of the Kurdish PKK in Turkey, the
murderer of the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, and two Muslims accused of terrorist
crimes in the Netherlands. Britta Bo
¨hler is also the author of the book Crisis in de
Rechtsstaat [Crisis in the Rule of Law]. In this book she describes, what she calls the
silent decline of the rule of law in the Netherlands, for the sake of improving public
safety and security. In order to prove her point of view, she uses a number of criminal
cases and recently proposed changes in Dutch law, mainly aimed at combating
terrorism more effectively. One can summarise her position as follows: the
government and the public prosecution tend to focus their attention that much
on the fight against terrorism that they have themselves become a threat to the rule
of law. Until now only the independent judiciary has corrected this threat and
subsequently that judiciary is under attack from political parties as well. The
accusation is familiar amongst human rights specialists, and the cases dealt with by
Bo
¨hler can be multiplied by similar cases from many other countries.
The meeting between the senior police officers and Britta Bo
¨hler was called a
‘book review’. The essence was a discussion about her analysis and conclusions. Two
police officers commented on the book and a discussion amongst the 20 senior
officers present and Britta Bo
¨hler followed. In the discussion four conclusions stood
out:
a. The police officers agreed with Britta Bo
¨hler that the proposals put before the
Dutch parliament were a threat to the rule of law.
b. They did not think the legal measures and proposals were of much help to
them. They considered that their present powers provided them with enough
room to investigate terrorist threats.
c. The police felt under great pressure to produce results in the fight against
terrorism and some gave examples of, sometimes undue, pressure from the
judicial authorities on the police. According to the officers, the pressure at least
in the cases mentioned, was succesfully resisted.
d. Capacity was a major problem: too much work was required from too small an
organisation. Next to existing tasks and problems of high crime, the new threats
could not be dealt with by the law enforcement agencies: investigating
terrorism, the extended protection of buildings, premises and persons, the
increasing threats and attacks against mosques and schools and the unrest
amongst Muslim minorities and increasing tension between these minorities
and parts of the Dutch population. Keeping in touch with minorities as well as
with the Dutch population and helping to reduce fear and antagonism was
COLUMN
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 23/2, 171-172, 2005.
#Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Printed in the Netherlands. 171
* Piet van Reenen is extraordinary professor of human rights and police at Utrecht University, the
Netherlands.
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