European Commission warns Netherlands to continue supporting public broadcaster

The European Commission thinks that the Netherlands must continue to support the quality of their public broadcast and improve the conditions for the public media to "live up to journalistic standards." The commission is concerned about the "ongoing attempts to reform public broadcasting." The commission also finds the trend that newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters are gradually becoming part of an increasingly smaller number of media companies' worrying.

In their new yearly report about the state of the rule of law in EU countries, the Netherlands is also recommended to take action regarding work pressure and staff shortages in the judicial services.

The commission is also cautious about the progress that the Netherlands has made with previous recommendations that the country should ensure that retiring politicians do not immediately take their contacts and acquired knowledge with them to a new job in, for example, the business community. They feel the Netherlands has made "some progress" in this. As far as the committee is concerned, there should be a clear cooling-off period of two years and more transparent rules regarding lobbying to prevent "revolving door" abuses.

There was also criticism from the commission about the compensation for parents involved in the benefits scandal about childcare costs. The process of compensating these victims is going too slowly, according to the commission. Even though the Cabinet, parliament, and the judiciary are all working to correct the unjustified accusation that these parents committed fraud. However, the committee notes that many initiatives remain in a preparatory phase, including those intended to prevent recurrence.

The commission has analyzed every EU country. This is the fifth time that a yearly report of this type has been released. The commission is quite mild about the Netherlands compared to some other countries. The intention of the reports is that, in the long term, the entire European Union will lay a stronger foundation for the rule of law.

For the first time, EU candidate states were also analyzed. Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia are the most advanced in their accession processes out of the EU candidates. The commission believes that these countries can benefit from the recommendations at an early stage.