Cabinet members not transparent about meetings with lobbyists: researchers

Ministers and State Secretaries in the Schoof I Cabinet are not very open about the appointments in their agenda with lobbyists, for example, say researchers from the Open State Foundation. Appointments do not always end up in the Ministers’ public agendas. If they do, the information is often incomplete. Six Cabinet members, including Minister Eddy van Hijum (Social Affairs and Employment), don’t even keep any records at all.

NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt is one of the advocates in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, for greater transparency about Ministers' agendas. But according to the Open State Foundation, the Cabinet his party helped form has made a “completely false start” when it comes to this.

In “only 13 percent” of cases, the information in Cabinet members’ public agendas is complete, the researchers write. That is about the same as the previous Cabinet. Moreover, they suspect that many appointments do not even make it into the agendas.

The Open State Foundation notes that the 29 Ministers and State Secretaries registered only 160 appointments in July and August. “That is remarkably few in a period in which work was being done on the government program,” said the foundation, which advocates for government transparency. The researchers also found 33 appointments mentioned on social media that were not on the public agendas.

Education Minister Eppo Bruis has the fullest public agenda with 14 appointments. In addition to Minister Van Hijum, Ministers Marjolein Faber (Asylum and Migration), Caspar Veldkamp (Foreign Affairs), David van Weel (Justice and Security), and State Secretaries Eddie van Marum (Groningen Recovery) and Jurgen Nobel (Participation and Integration) did not have a single appointment in their public agenda.

The information in the public agenda is the most complete for Minister Fleur Agema (Public Health, Welfare, and Sport). She reported 11 appointments and added all the required information for 10 of them. The agenda must include the person met with as well as the topic of discussion. Ten of the 15 Ministries did not have the complete information for a single appointment in their Cabinet members’ public agendas.

The previous Cabinet promised to maintain the agendas according to an agreed guideline. In the government program, the current Cabinet also states it will “promote” transparency of Cabinet members.