The Netherlands found itself in hot water yesterday, as it was named one of the four EU member states the European Commission will take to the Court Justice.
According to a press release by the European Commission, this action is due to these member states’ failure to turn certain EU rules into national laws.
National measures have not yet been communicated
The European Commission reported that the Netherlands and three other member states failed to transform EU regulations on both open data and the re-use of public sector data into national laws.
The deadline for communicating information on national measures expired on July 17 2021 and letters of formal notice were sent to each member state in September 2021 by the European Commission.
Despite this, none of the member states were transparent about whether or not EU regulations had been applied on a national level.
A total of four member states are named
Belgium, Latvia, and Bulgaria join the Netherlands as the EU member states named in the press release.
They will now be referred to the EU Court of Justice for their failure to comply with EU laws.
The Netherlands is no stranger to botched transparency
The childcare allowance scandal, in which a number of low-income and immigrant families were falsely accused of fraud and had to repay tens of thousands of euros, is perhaps the most glaring example of this.
Although resulting in State Secretary Snel’s resignation, an evaluation report from 2015 indicated that Snel and others were aware of the incorrect information, but chose to ignore it.
In addition to this, Mark Rutte’s infamous texting scandal was also noted to have violated the Archives Act.
READ MORE | It’s official: Dutch PM Mark Rutte in the wrong for deleting text messages
Despite Rutte’s claim that he deleted messages in order to unclutter his old Nokia, the Inspectorate concluded that this decision did not align with official laws on the deletion and storage of information. Whoops! 👀
What do you think of the European Commission’s decision? Tell us all about it in the comments below!
Screw the EU.
What a lot of Dutch people think right now? F**k the EU! We are paying most of all, but when something is not right according the un-democratic elected EC, we have to be fined asap, while other countries are told to follow the rules, but never react and are never fined. They think they are si important in Brussels, but Europe would be better off without the EU
The sooner the EU is dissolved the better.
I think Netherlands will manage for it has good lawyers and perhaps it also has strong reasons against the accusations. Has the warning letters or reminders already served? Then why take it to court straight on?
Now you are all realising why the British wanted to leave the all controlling eu. The eu doesn’t care about your countries laws only theirs.
If you think that a less transparent government is better for its citizens than maybe the EU is in the wrong here but I really don’t understand how the other commentators can be so narrow minded. If the EU is wrong there is a European parliament than can change its laws, the Netherlands is part of that parliament.