THE HAGUE--The Party for Freedom PVV will not put aside its law proposal to set up a system of forced return of criminal persons from Aruba, Curaçao and St. Maarten, despite the objections of the Council of State against the 2014 law proposal.

 

PVV Members of the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament Sietse Fritsma and Machiel de Graaf, who presented the law proposal on the eve of the handling of the draft 2015 Kingdom Relations budget early October 2014, have stated that they do not agree with the observations of the Council of State that the law proposal was, among others “disproportionate and discriminatory.”

 

“The advice of the Council of State to reconsider the law proposal will not be followed by the initiative takers because they don’t share the doubts that the Council has regarding the proposed expulsion. These doubts in no way weigh against the proposal’s objective: the protection of the Dutch society against crime and serious problems,” stated Fritsma and De Graaf.

 

The initiative takers resubmitted the law proposal on Wednesday, following the advice of the Council of State earlier this year. The Council’s advice has now been published. According to the Council, the law proposal differentiates among persons with the Dutch nationality, whereby persons from Aruba, Curaçao and St. Maarten are “unequally treated.”

 

The Council has “serious doubts” as to whether the proposed expulsion regulation and the differentiation among national descent could be “justified.” The law proposal was also considered “disproportional” because it mainly targeted people from Curaçao, the group that is over-represented in crime statistics.

 

The Council further pointed out that concrete figures were lacking which confirmed that persons from the individual islands indeed posed a major problem in the Netherlands. “The figures presented in the Explanatory Note are too undifferentiated.”

 

The figures do not provide information on the share of persons of the individual countries in the total crime figure of the Netherlands. “They merely indicate that persons from the Dutch Caribbean are over-represented in crime figures in comparison with persons of non-Dutch descent. The comparison is irrelevant in light of the principle of equality and (international) anti-discrimination regulations.”

 

Through this law proposal, the PVV aims to protect the Dutch society and to place the protection of victims of violence, armed robberies and other severe crimes under focus by removing violent and aggressive Dutch Caribbean persons, stated Fritsma and De Graaf in their motivation.

Safety and the interest of the victims are key.

 

Persons from the overseas countries who commit a crime in the Netherlands would be expelled, after being convicted by the Courts, based on the so-called “gliding scale.” This system, which also exists in the Dutch Law on Foreigners (Vreemdelingenwet), entails that the shorter the stay in the Netherlands, the smaller conviction needed to remove a person.

 

In other words, if a person from the islands has only resided in the Netherlands for a few months or years, he or she can be expelled based on a court sentence for a relatively minor crime. The law proposal does not include an end term, so persons having resided in the Netherlands for more than 15 years can still be sent back.

 

The law proposal does not apply to persons born in one of the Dutch public entities Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba. The advice of the Council of State is not binding, but is deemed important in The Hague. The PVV law proposal is now ready for handling in the Second Chamber, but it remains to be seen whether it will enjoy the support of a majority in Parliament.

 

The Daily Herald