On April 12, 2023, the Advisory Division of the Raad van State adopted its opinion on the bill for a permanent regulation for decentralized authorities to hold digital meetings. The opinion was made public on April 17, 2023 and published on the website of the Raad van State.
On April 12, 2023, the Advisory Division of the Raad van State adopted its opinion on the bill for a permanent regulation for decentralized authorities to hold digital meetings. The opinion was made public on April 17, 2023 and published on the website of the Raad van State.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need arose for municipal councils (and other decentralized assemblies) to hold digital meetings. This was provided at the time by the Temporary Act on Digital Deliberation and Decision Making Provinces, Municipalities, Water Boards and Public Entities of Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba. Simultaneously with the enactment of this temporary law, the Evaluation Committee Temporary Digital Deliberation and Decision Making Act was established in order to learn from the experiences gained. In its final report, the evaluation committee recommended that the law be amended to allow decentralized governments to hold digital meetings but only in emergency situations. The bill gives a general option to hold meetings digitally instead of physically. With some exceptions, such as council meetings where council members are being sworn in, local councils can decide whether and when to hold physical or digital meetings. The government assumes that physical and digital meetings are equivalent. The proposal also allows for experimentation with hybrid meetings.
The Advisory Division does not endorse the rationale of the bill. By equating physical and digital meetings, the bill ignores the basic premise that representatives of the people meet collectively and visibly for everyone in a room specially equipped for that purpose. These halls not only facilitate proceedings, but also have an important "constitutional value. Being a political community is visibly expressed and the representation of the people derives its authority partly from this. This important value is affected too much in a digital meeting, because council members then all participate separately from their own environment. Much of the mutual interaction is also lost in digital meetings, while that interaction is an essential part of the debate. According to the Advisory Division, physical meetings should therefore remain the main legal rule.
Because physical and digital conferencing are not equivalent, the advice to the government is to reconsider the bill. However, the Advisory Division does believe that, in line with the evaluation, a statutory provision is needed to enable digital meetings in emergency situations such as a pandemic. In addition, the Advisory Division can imagine that purely internal matters could be discussed digitally. However, the legislator must define these situations specifically so that digital meetings remain an exception.
