Johan Vollenbroek does not feel threatened. He actually laughs at the motion passed on Tuesday asking the cabinet to investigate whether stricter requirements can be imposed on interest groups that want to take the state to court. “But above all it gives a deeply sad feeling that a parliamentary majority goes along with it.”
The chairman of Mobilization for the Environment (Mob) has successfully filed lawsuits against the government over nitrogen. In 2019, for example, the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State ruled in favor of Mob in various proceedings, meaning that thousands of permits that had been granted on the basis of the Nitrogen Approach Program could be thrown in the trash. The nitrogen crisis was born.
The House of Representatives voted in favor on Tuesday a motion submitted by SGP Member of Parliament Chris Stoffer during the climate debate, with the support of BBB and JA21. Coalition parties VVD and CDA voted in favour, to the consternation of coalition partner D66.
He finds it “incomprehensible and worrying” that coalition partners agree to a proposal that seems to want to limit “access to justice for organizations”, writes MP Joost Sneller on Twitter. The motion explicitly requests the government to investigate whether stricter requirements can be imposed on the eligibility of ‘interest organizations with an idealistic purpose’.
‘Election rhetoric’
Since the motion was tabled during the climate debate, it is obvious that the people submitting the motion drew their inspiration from climate and environmental statements elicited by litigating organizations such as Mob and Urgenda.
The motion specifies Article 3:305a of the Civil Code. Vollenbroek: “I think that has to do with property law and nothing to do with administrative law. We derive the basis for our procedures from European legislation and our articles of association, so the court assesses that.”
He refers to the Aarhus Convention (1998), which regulates, among other things, the access of citizens and organizations to justice in environmental matters. “Either they have no idea of European law, or they play stupid and it is election rhetoric,” he says about MPs who support the motion.
All we’re doing is holding the government to laws they’ve made up themselves
The Urgenda climate case, on the other hand, was not dealt with by administrative courts, but by civil courts. In that case, it was ruled that the Dutch government must adhere to the target of a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to 1990.
The State Attorney tried to have Urgenda sidelined by the court, but the court referred to the explanatory memorandum of Section 3:305a of the Dutch Civil Code. It was considered that “an environmental organization for the protection of the environment, without an identifiable group of persons requiring protection” can indeed take the government to court. The Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court agreed with this interpretation.
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Shut up
“What particularly triggered me about the Urgenda ruling was that coal-fired power stations in the Netherlands had to be closed, while there are much dirtier power stations just across the border in Germany,” said Chris Stoffer, who submitted the motion. “In my view, the public interest is the Dutch population. In my ideal, only the Senate and the House of Representatives stand up for the public interest.”
He talks about the Defense Act. “Suppose we have the 2 percent norm [van de NAVO] and you end up with 1.9 percent defense spending in a given year. Will organizations also litigate? You should not want to.”
“All we do is hold the government to laws that they have come up with themselves. The government is supposed to abide by the law, isn’t it?” says environmental activist Vollenbroek. He therefore finds it “morally reprehensible that the House says that they do not want NGOs that hold us to laws that we have approved ourselves.”
Stoffer denies that he wants to silence interest groups. He hopes that the cabinet will not ignore the motion and will “outline a number of scenarios” that can then be discussed in a parliamentary debate. “My point is that Urgenda has a very tight target. If you come up with that, I would like to see if you are sufficiently representative.”
When would an organization be? “You can think of having a lot of paying members, or that they represent the interests of a very large part of the population,” says Stoffer. “Preferably all Dutch people.”