break the law? It is the newly sworn-in Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Eppo Bruins (NSC). And it was not the least who asked this question in July 2024: one of Bruins’ top officials, General State Archivist and director of the National Archives, Afelonne Doek. Bruins had taken office two weeks earlier and was now being briefed on an important file: the digital publication – in January 2025 – of more than 450,000 war files on Dutch people who had collaborated with the Germans. And publishing that was not without risk. Violations of the law and lawsuits were looming. Hence the question to the minister. Was he willing to violate privacy laws? Because that risk was there. “We have acknowledged that there will be a violation of the law.”
Seven years of preparation preceded that digital operation, in which all those criminal cases would come to light. The National Archives and a large number of officials at the Bruins ministry – OCW was the responsible department – were involved in the project War for the Judgefor which approximately 25 million euros had been made available. It involved publication of the , which would be launched five months later. Nowhere else was such a large and sensitive war file online. But it was also a controversial project. Relatives of alleged collaborators were opposed to this publicity. was warned of a conflict with privacy legislation because not everyone in the war files had died. And it was technically not possible to manually filter those living people from the archives, the minister said
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The report of that conversation is part of a series of documents that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science recently released following a request from NRC for disclosure of that government information. These documents provide a picture of the last months before the project was ultimately killed by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP). The documents show how repair legislation was initiated that should still make online publication possible, but with a significant delay. Earlier this month, the Council of State gave the green light for this, and the House of Representatives will give its opinion on it early next year.
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Risk analyses
Bruins did not know that outcome shortly after he took office, last June. In that first conversation with the State Archivist, he indicated that he had personal involvement in those war archives, his family appears in them. . But he nevertheless thought the online accessibility of those criminal files was important, because the surviving relatives of victims and resistance members also had the right to their family history and they could hardly access those archives eighty years after the Second World War.
His answer to the question of whether he was prepared to defy privacy legislation was ‘blacked out’ in the document in question. Yes, provided the AP would be further involved. “I now knew that there could be a small number of people in those files who are still alive. That there was therefore a risk of privacy violation,” says Bruins in response to questions from NRC. “So if those archives are opened digitally, I am actually being asked to break the law. I then said that everything had to be done to prevent that.
The minister knew at that time that there were external risk analyzes from the legal consultancy firm Eiffel and from professor of archival science Charles Jeurgens. “Those risks could never be completely eliminated,” Bruins says afterwards.
This also applied to the top of the National Archives. “Privacy is subordinate to our mission, we are not the Dutch Data Protection Authority, but the National Archives, we serve the right to information,” s. “We also do not have the capacity to avoid all risks 100 percent.”
Opened files from the Central Archives for Special Legal Procedure.
Photo Jeroen Jumelet / ANP
Hidden note
But after the summer of 2024, that image changed. Internally, there was increasing resistance to this unanimity among the top officials. So there was a self, containing . As early as 2023, it warned about the risks of damage claims and sky-high fines from the Dutch Data Protection Authority, rising to 750,000 euros per violation. But internally, all those warnings that privacy was seriously at stake did indeed lead to cracks in the consortium War for the Judge were the National Archives, WO2Net, the Huygens Institute and the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD).
Three months before the launch of the project, NIOD threatened to resign because of these possible privacy violations. “Online publishing is a violation of the rights of individual citizens,” was the criticism according to a report in September. “Then we seem to be heading for proceedings against the National Archives, the national repository of our past. Then we, as the institutions involved, issue a certificate of inability.”
This was resolved without publicity and NIOD remained on board, with the promise that the archives would go online in phases, not all at once. And that there would be a good complaints procedure. Officials at the ministry were concerned with other things, for example with the risks of compensation claims if it turned out that people had been wrongly convicted at the time.
If a project has such a high risk of privacy violation and there are no measures to address it,
It was not until 2024 that officials at OCW realized that the AP could become a problem. Previously, there were not many concerns about this, according to internal email traffic. And nothing had been done with the minister’s order in June to work closely with the AP. “The AP asked a few questions in April,” said an OCW spokesperson afterwards. “And after providing documentation, the National Archives awaited any follow-up questions from the AP.”
“Someone from the Dutch Data Protection Authority has requested documents from the National Archives,” an OCW official emailed in June. “That seemed to be more out of collegial interest than that the AP is now investigating this.” But the National Archives had not subsequently provided that internal legal note on its own initiative. Only from October on did the tone at the ministry change, especially after the AP actually wanted to see the internal legal advice from the National Archives: “W documents”, officials at the ministry were told. They, in turn, had to ask the National Archives for it themselves.
they have been warned at the ministry: “This is an important conversation. Make sure we have the right legal expertise at the table,” is now the tone in mutual communication. “Depending on the outcome, it is also important to inform the minister,” an OCW official emails. , “even though the Dutch Data Protection Authority may draw completely different conclusions.”
In another email, on October 17, from an OCW official after he had been called by a colleague from the AP, the ministry had a dramatic outcome: “At the AP they also understand the sensitivity of this project. […] But I got the idea that if NA sticks to its course, it could become a collision course for the AP.”
Warning letter
A day later, the ministry realizes that the AP is indeed on a collision course. “, according to mutual email traffic. “It is not the case that we have to involve supervisors in everything.” Well, as it turned out the next day from an email from the AP to the ministry: “If a project has such a high residual risk of privacy violation and there are no measures to remedy that, .”
On November 29, that ‘collision course’ will also be put on paper. Then a ‘warning letter’ from AP board chairman Aleid Wolfsen is delivered to the minister stating that, as far as he is concerned, the online publication project cannot go ahead. “Disappointing,” was the verdict in a hastily convened interdepartmental meeting.
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Officially, the option was still open that the minister would ignore the warning letter: “We will speak to the minister this afternoon at 4:30 PM. Will he follow the urgent advice or not?” was the question in internal email traffic. “You could have provoked case law, advised,” he says afterwards. “But the AP is the rule of law, which determines. So when that warning letter was issued, it had to prevail.”
A year later, November 2025, the Council of State gives the green light for a plan that will eventually make digital publication of those war archives possible. This new law includes the European GDPR directive, which provides that limited public archives may still be online when it concerns archives about war, genocide and crimes against humanity. The bill is expected to go to the House of Representatives early next year.
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