Municipal councils or provincial councils should be able to determine at their own discretion whether they hold meetings and debates online or physically. This is what the government proposes with the Decentralized Government Digital Meetings Act. The law must offer governments the option to decide to hold digital or partly digital meetings, even without emergency situations.
Not a good idea, says the Council of State. Digital meetings and decision-making should only take place in legally defined emergency situations, according to the Council of State. ‘Purely internal’ discussions, ie separate from democratic decision-making, can exceptionally take place online.
The government wrongly places physical and digital meetings on an equal footing, according to the advisory body. The law ignores the democratic value of meetings of the people’s representatives. Council chambers not only have a practical purpose, but ‘also serve an important constitutional value’, writes the Council of State. Residents can attend the meetings of their representatives and also have a say. The meeting of governments, ‘often surrounded by rituals’, has a public significance that, according to the Council of State, should not be underestimated.
In the corona pandemic, a temporary law has arranged that governments could continue to meet online in order to continue to govern. This was necessary, because both the Constitution and the Municipal Act assume a physical meeting. The new law must ensure that in comparable situations it is possible to switch immediately to the digital alternative.