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Published On: Thu, Sep 29th, 2016

Bosman-law

VVD-MP André Bosman has been at it for a long time with his initiative-law to restrict access to the Netherlands for citizens from St. Maarten, Aruba and Curacao. Yesterday his initiative law stranded in the Second Chamber.

One may well wonder whether this is indeed a reason to celebrate. What we learn here is that two political parties in the Netherlands –Bosman’s VVD and Geert Wilders’ PVV – have no problem with discriminatory legislation. The good news is that all the other parties, including the VVD’s ailing coalition partner PvdA are not buying it.

From that perspective, we still have friends in The Hague. However, closer scrutiny of the arguments for voting against Bosman’s law seem to have little to do with the interests of the Caribbean islands and their inhabitants. Parties fell over the legal implications of the draft law and – let’s not forget that one – over the scale differences. For once, being a larger country than the three Caribbean islands combined worked against the Netherlands.

While Dutch MPs don’t want to limit access of Antilleans to the Netherlands, they understand that the islands, because of their scale and because of their limited absorption-capacity, are justified to set criteria for admitting Dutch citizens to their territories.
So far, all attempts the VVD has undertaken to limit the rights of Antillean citizens in the Netherlands have failed, but Bosman has already indicated that he is not giving up. We won’t see him come back soon with another proposal along the lines of his failed initiative-law but it is almost a given that he will be brooding on new plans.

Bosman, and with him Socialist Party MP Ronald van Raak, also saw fit this week to express their concerns about local elections in St. Maarten and Curacao. Not surprisingly, the word mafia fell again during these discussions. And even less surprisingly, Minister Stef Blok told the two parliamentarians what they have known for a long time: these elections are the concern of the autonomous countries.

We always wonder, if Dutch MPs are so concerned about all kinds of anything in the Caribbean, why don’t they ever come up with ideas that are actually helpful?