Chairman,

Article 2:20 paragraph 1 of the Civil Code reads as follows:

A legal entity whose purpose or activities are contrary to public order shall be declared prohibited and dissolved by the court at the request of the public prosecutor.

Based on this, earlier criminal motorcycle gangs – but also the Martijn association – have been banned by the court. Due to the freedom of association and assembly, the Supreme Court has rightly concretized the concept of “contrary to public order” in a strict manner, so that bans cannot be declared lightly. In any case, this can currently only happen by a prior decision from the court. The intention of the bill we are discussing today is that the Minister should also be able to prohibit a legal entity or body. In practice, it is conceivable that the Minister considers a ban on a subversive organization at the request of a mayor. The court will, of course, continue to play a decisive role if the ban decision is contested - it is only a review after the decision itself has been made.

Appreciation

Now it is the case that my faction would like to compliment the initiators for their work. This particularly concerns the people who originally set up the bill, such as the then members of the House of Representatives Kuiken, PvdA, and Van Toorenburg. It is known to you that the latter is now my faction colleague in this Chamber. After all the changes in the team of members of the House of Representatives that takes on the defense of the proposal, the CDA also expresses appreciation for the members of parliament who are now sitting behind the government table. But my faction also wants to acknowledge the good work of other - whether or not departed - members of the House of Representatives outside the team. This includes the former member Maarten Groothuizen of D66 for submitting valuable amendments to the initial bill. In particular, I mean the amended amendment with document number 26. Chairman, I will elaborate on that.

Criteria

Originally, the decisive criterion was that if a legal entity creates a “culture of lawlessness,” it should be able to be prohibited. In light of the freedom of association and assembly, this was too low a threshold. With the acceptance of the aforementioned Groothuizen amendment, two cumulative conditions have been added that are based on the Supreme Courts concretization of the concept of “contrary to public order,” in light of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Thus, one condition is that the organization must pose a real and serious infringement of principles of the Dutch legal order that are considered essential. And also a condition: Dutch society or parts thereof can be disrupted as a result.

However, the bill originally already had as a criterion that the organization in question must create a culture of lawlessness. The Groothuizen amendment has even provided clarification on this point, namely with the requirement that systematic criminal offenses must have been committed. This makes the legal regime appear stricter than the rules in the Civil Code for dissolution. Based on the public order criterion included therein, a legal entity can indeed be dissolved even without criminal offenses having been committed, let alone systematically.

Given the text that the Groothuizen amendment has brought, the CDA faction understands that the Minister of Justice and Security recently wrote that the bill is explicitly aimed at criminal motorcycle gangs and similar organizations. In any case, the Minister is therefore at least as bound to a restrained application of the possible new authority as the court. Should the Minister nonetheless have resorted to this means too lightly, the administrative judge could annul the ban decision.

Added value

Of course, you can ask the question, chairman, whether the Ministers ban authority really adds anything to the fight against organizations that undermine society. In any case, unlike the authority in the Civil Code for the court, this authority is not limited to legal entities. Furthermore, this way, it could really be possible to stop a motorcycle gang more quickly than through the civil law route. The advantage is that a minister responsible for protecting our rule of law is no longer dependent on an initiative from the Public Prosecution Service if he wants to cut a highly problematic organization out of our society.

However, this does not mean that the Public Prosecution Service is completely out of the picture: the Minister must first hear the College of Prosecutors General before making a ban decision. This can prevent an administrative ban from interfering with criminal investigations.

Chairman, I can be brief: my faction is overall happy to support the bill.