The Supreme Administrative Court according to NRC strong criticism of the government’s approach to extra compensation for victims of the allowance affair. The working method is ill-considered with a high risk of errors, the Council of State states in an unpublished advice that the newspaper has seen.
There would be talk of “a jumble of regulations”. As a result, “the democratic legitimacy and quality of decision-making and legislation are under serious pressure”. By constantly making promises and thus creating high expectations among the victims, the recovery operation has become too complex, the Council of State concluded in an advice according to the newspaper last month.
Additional groups
Earlier, the cabinet came up with the so-called Catshuis arrangement, which means that victims in the affair are entitled to 30,000 euros in compensation. In the meantime, ministries are working on a new scheme, which, according to the newspaper, aims at three extra target groups. Namely: children and ex-partners of victimized parents, and victims who ran into problems with benefits other than the childcare benefit.
Ministers want to make decisions next Tuesday, according to NRC on the basis of insiders, because hardly anything would have been reimbursed for this group. The pressure to act quickly is mounting. For example, CBS reported last Tuesday that over a thousand children of benefit victims were evicted from their homes between 2015 and 2020.
Stuck
But municipalities fear that for the upcoming scheme, just like with the Catshuis scheme, many more applications will be received than the government can handle. As a result, the settlement of the compensation was delayed earlier this year fully fixedThe newspaper says that municipalities will discuss the compensation plans with the cabinet next week.
On January 15, the Rutte III cabinet fell because of the allowance affair. Tens of thousands of parents had gotten into trouble for being wrongly treated as fraudsters and forced to repay benefits. In doing so, the principles of the rule of law were violated, concluded a parliamentary inquiry committee. The caretaker cabinet has released extra billions to compensate the victims.
NOS op 3 made this explainer video about the debacle:
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