Administrative fines against authorities are becoming ineffective
Public authorities are increasingly being fined for failure to comply with decision periods specified in the Dutch Open Government Act (Woo). But to what extent is this remedy still effective? Geerten Boogaard, Professor of Local Government, discussed this on 'Mr.', a recognised platform for legal professionals in the Netherlands.
Last summer, investigators from investigative journalism platform Follow the Money reported that a penalty payment ‘isn't worth much anymore’. A third legal recourse, following the Dutch Ministry of Health’s failure to provide information on the face mask deal on time, proved ineffective. The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) and the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) are also facing hefty penalty payments, having already received thousands this year, reports Mr.
Professor Boogaard says it is ‘all too easy to bash the government when decision periods are not met’. He adds that there are civil servants who want to comply with the Woo but are swamped with files relating to ‘settling penalty payments imposed by courts rather than actual work’. At the IND, files relating to penalty payments are no longer given priority and work is completed on a ‘first-in, first-out’ basis. This means that files relating to citizens with or without financial means, which may or may not involve penalty payments, are processed by order of entry into the system. Professor Boogards notes that ‘to a certain extent, there’s something to be said for that’.
According to Professor Boogaard, penalty payments are now becoming the norm, when they should be imposed as an exception. In practice, penalty payments are increasingly being factored into the budget under the ‘legal costs’ item. This happened in the Dutch childcare benefits scandal and resulted in significant reputational damage for the authorities concerned and diminishing public confidence in the government.
Research conducted by one of Professor Boogaard's students has shown that the financial incentive for government authorities is ineffective. The person imposing a penalty should not be the one making changes to policies or work processes. For this reason, Professor Boogaard advocates for penalty payments that cause reputational damage to the recipients, rather than just financial loss. He explains: ‘There’s a shared responsibility to turn the penalty payment into an effective instrument again.’
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Read the full Mr. article (in Dutch)
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