The Dutch Congress asks the Venice Commission to investigate the family aid scandal

Acting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte speaks to the media about the pandemic situation in the country on Monday, DPA via Europa Press / Europa Press

The Congress of the Netherlands approved a motion on Tuesday to request that the Venice Commission investigate the failures recorded in the scandal on aid to families that ended up overthrowing the center-right government on January 15.

Specifically, the Chamber wants to know what happened to data protection and how the law that led to the accusations against thousands of families was applied.

The Venice Commission is an advisory body of the Council of Europe, -specialized in Constitutional Law, the protection of human rights and the improvement of democratic institutions-, and the Dutch Chamber wants it to analyze the situation of its citizens to this respect.

The scandal that brought down the Government chaired by Mark Rutte revealed that the nearly 30,000 parents, many of them of immigrant origin, who were wrongly accused by the Tax Agency of fraud in the perception of childcare aid between 2014 and 2019 and in many cases they had to go into debt to return the amounts, they suffered the added discrimination of having their origin exposed.

A practice considered illegal in the country since 2014.

• The Dutch Government resigns en bloc over the scandal in childcare aid

The Venice Commission makes legislative proposals that are usually taken up by the affected countries.

This has happened with rulings regarding respect for the rule of law in various countries, from Albania to Mexico, and from South Africa to Poland.

The Dutch Congress agrees that it analyzes the situation of the legal protection of citizens, especially in the face of administrative laws, because the parliamentary commission that studied the scandal of family allowances criticized the Government and Parliament, "for relentlessly applying the norms, without paying attention to the precepts that protect the citizenship ”.

And also "for drafting laws that do not do justice to personal situations."

In the same session on Tuesday, the Dutch Chamber approved the creation of a state commission to study the operation of the legal system to avoid similar cases.

The Christian Democrat deputy Pieter Omtzigt, who has presented the motion to the Chamber for the Venice Commission to intervene, answered in 2017 the call of the lawyer Eva González Pérez, of Spanish origin.

She uncovered the scandal of family aid, and the deputy has questioned the Government about the case in control sessions.

Omtzigt hopes that the petition will be included in the next plenary session of the Venice Commission, scheduled for March 18.

In his opinion, this body is the right place to address the issue "because in this scandal the Executive and the courts have failed, that is, we have a problem with the rule of law."

In its

In my opinion, there is nothing shameful about going to the Commission, requested on other occasions by France or Belgium.

"What is ashamed is what happened to thousands of unprotected families," says González, in a telephone conversation.

The Tax Agency canceled the aid, sometimes due to a simple administrative error, while keeping the relationship of the origin of the parents.

When presenting the resignation en bloc of his Government, two months before the elections, the now acting Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, assured that all the families would be compensated with a sum amounting to 30,000 euros for each one.

Shortly after, the Treasury agreed that the debts contracted by the parents with official entities to return the aid would be forgiven, but the loans requested from private entities remain in force.

Right now, creditors, be they banks, power companies or real estate companies, refuse to forgive them, so that the compensation can end up in their hands.

Faced with the looming administrative tug of war, Congress also approved a motion on Tuesday by virtue of which it urges the Government to assume the private discoveries of parents, and reform the subsidy system.