Dutch King again defends holiday trip to Greece days into Netherlands Covid lockdown

King Willem-Alexander again defended a holiday he and his family took to Greece in October 2020, just days after the Netherlands entered into a partial lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. The lockdown included the strong advice not to travel unless absolutely necessary. The King acknowledged that the trip was a mistake, but added that the trip wasn’t banned and that the Prime Minister had approved it.

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima attended a performance by Kwintes, a group of performers with intellectual disabilities, in Flevoland on Tuesday. Afterward, one of the attendees asked the King about the trip to Greece and Princess Amalia’s 18th birthday party, both of which happened during lockdowns.

Willem-Alexander again acknowledged that, in hindsight, the trip was not wise, but he stressed that it was permitted, RTL Nieuws reports. “The Prime Minister knew about it and allowed it. So it wasn’t wrong,” he said. “It was wrong because the country went into lockdown. You weren’t allowed to go to a pub, so we shouldn’t have gone to Greece either.”

But according to the King, whenever this topic comes up, the part where the trip was permitted always gets lost. “Unfortunately, it happened, and we made the wrong decision based on what was allowed.”

The Royals faced a great deal of criticism for their Greece holiday and the crown princess’s birthday party during a time when the rest of the Netherlands had to just deal with the disappointment of canceled trips and celebrating important birthdays and milestones with no one but their households.

The Royal family’s popularity took a blow in public opinion, and years later, their ratings still haven’t fully recovered. In April 2020, their approval was at a record high, with Willem-Alexander scoring a 7.7 and Maxima scoring an 8.0 out of ten. Five years later, Willem-Alexander’s approval rating has slowly climbed back to 6.9 and Maxima’s to 7.5, according to an annual poll by Ipsos I&O ahead of King’s Day.

Support for the monarchy also fell by about 20 percentage points during the pandemic from about 75 percent in 2020. It hadn’t recovered by last year, holding at about 57 percent, with 25 percent outright opposed to a monarchy. This year, support for the monarchy increased slightly for the first time in five years, with 62 percent of the Dutch supporting having a monarchy over a republic.