In early 2025, the House of Representatives decided that the binding corrective referendum must be made possible by amending the Constitution. The Senate is now considering this question. Ultimately, it is up to the cabinet to create an implementation law for this.
Minister Rijkaart: “With this outline letter, we sketch how we want to implement this in practice, with the goal that the Dutch have more influence on new legislation. The corrective referendum is an important instrument that allows people to express whether they are for or against a bill that has already been approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate. At the same time, we must ensure that this can be done thoroughly, to prevent us from resorting to this means too easily.”
Barriers for organization and result
In the letter, the cabinet outlines various choices it expects to make for the implementation law. One of the choices concerns the required number of people that can request a referendum.
First, 5,000 people must submit a request to organize a referendum. If this is successful, the final request must still be supported by 400,000 people within 8 weeks for the referendum to actually take place.
The cabinet aligns with the advice of the State Commission on the parliamentary system, and this number strikes a good balance between not too frivolous and not practically impossible.
Another choice concerns when the result of the referendum is valid. There is a so-called outcome threshold. The outcome threshold means that the (winning) majority must also gather a predetermined number of votes. For the national referendum, the cabinet states that this must be 33.33% of all eligible voters. This percentage strikes a balance between representativeness and feasibility of the referendum.
The cabinet will later decide on the outcome threshold for decentralized referenda, in consultation with organizations such as the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG).
Agreements on frequency
Consideration has also been given to feasibility, with an important focus on the frequency of organizing referenda. The cabinet has discussed this with partners such as the Electoral Council and the Dutch Association for Civil Affairs, and adopted their advice. This means that the law will allow for combining votes, in the interest of efficiency and cost savings. At the same time, consideration must be given to the burden on municipalities and substantive influence, as the subject of a referendum may closely relate to election themes. Therefore, two exceptions have been made. A maximum of four referenda can take place simultaneously, and a national referendum will never coincide with provincial state and water board elections, as these are already combined elections. Sometimes this also concerns multiple water boards per province.