The top of the Ministry of the Interior intervened in 2020 in the affair surrounding the part-time job of the then Limburg deputy Ger Koopmans (CDA). Answers that the Provincial Executives wanted to give to questions from the Provincial Council were rejected by the ministry and replaced by answers that did not conflict with the vision of the ministry.
E-mail traffic released by the ministry shows that the province and ministry were arguing about the obligation to mention Koopmans’ consultancy company on its public ancillary job list. The conflict followed a publication in NRC which showed that Koopmans had not reported his consultancy company on his list of ancillary positions. Until 2017, Koopmans received his salary from a second part-time job through that consultancy, as a supervisory director of a dredging company.
The ministry pointed out that according to the provincial law, the commissioner should have made his consultancy firm public. Koopmans and governor Theo Bovens (CDA) saw it differently. Because the consultancy was no longer active since 2017, all that remained was a registration with the Chamber of Commerce and “a registration in itself is not an ancillary position”.
On Wednesday, the results of a survey by the Provincial Council into possible conflicts of interest between Koopmans and his part-time job at the dredging company will be published.
Ollongren updated
The ministry made it clear to Bovens in an email on October 31, 2020 that Limburg was wrong. Minister Kajsa Ollongren (D66) was also updated by her officials in an e-mail. It states that the Provincial Executive (GS), the executive board of the province, had previously answered questions from the Provincial Council “without seeking coordination” with the ministry. The email concluded that GS opted for “a fairly formalistic approach that tends to lose sight of the fact that avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest is just as important.”
Bovens and Koopmans were supported by an ‘analysis’ of their house lawyer. But officials from the ministry mainly read a purposeful reasoning in that analysis. An internal email: “Looks like they’ve been looking for a way to get their own confirmation.” The official top saw “a somewhat narrow, legal interpretation and a rather defensive attitude, instead of exercising openness and transparency in the spirit of the law”.
Also read: The hidden company of the Limburg Napoleon
Ministry intervenes
The conflict then escalated. A draft answer from GS to new questions from the Provincial Council was then first sent to The Hague. This time the ministry intervened. The draft answer, which started with the sentence “The King’s Commissioner still stands behind this earlier answer” disappeared in the wastepaper basket.
Instead, on 9 December 2020, the Provincial Council received an answer dictated by The Hague: “It has become apparent that the Ministry is of the opinion that ancillary positions that do not involve the performance of activities should also be made public. The ministry believes that not only the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law should be considered. It is therefore a question of avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest. There is no difference of opinion about its importance.”