Dutch king calls 2020 Greece holiday during pandemic his “biggest error of judgment”

Dutch King Willem-Alexander calls his holiday to Greece in October 2020 his "biggest error of judgment.” The trip happened when the rest of the Netherlands was in a partial lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. The king said that people rightly felt abandoned by him when he went on vacation. The trip was cut short and the royal couple apologized from home.

The king said he is disappointed that he did not realize that millions of Dutch people "did not have an autumn holiday and were locked up again" when, for example, bars and sports clubs closed due to the coronavirus. "People had nowhere to go and I happily went abroad," said Willem-Alexander on Thursday in the latest episode of Door de ogen van de Koning.

The weekly podcast with radio DJ Edwin Evers features discussions with the king over his 10-year reign. Each episode features a new year about his time on the throne.

The king explained that he mainly wanted to show what people could still do within the applicable coronavirus rules. The country’s Head of State said that it was often checked whether the holiday was still possible within the national Covid-19 measures.

In addition, nobody said to him in advance that he should not go, or that people would be upset by it, he told Evers. According to the king, very serious discussions were held afterwards.

Thursday's episode is about 2020, which was also the year in which the new organ donor law was introduced. The king said he is also an organ donor, but he is not allowed to donate blood because he attended secondary school in Wales from 1983 to 1985.

Anyone who lived in the United Kingdom for more than six months between 1980 and 1996 is prohibited from donating blood or blood plasma in the Netherlands due to a risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, more commonly known as mad cow disease.