Committee to evaluate judicial kingdom laws

The Daily Herald writes that a decision of the four ministers of Justice in the Dutch Kingdom to establish the Evaluation Committee Judicial Kingdom Laws was published in the National Gazette of the Netherlands on Friday. The committee, which will be established shortly, will evaluate four Kingdom Laws: the Kingdom Law Joint Court of Justice, the Kingdom Law Public Prosecutor’s Offices of Curaçao, St. Maarten and of Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, the Kingdom Law Police of Curaçao, St. Maarten and of Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, and the Kingdom Law Council for the Maintenance of Law and Order (Raad voor Rechtshandhaving).

The four Justice Ministers, Arthur Dowers of Aruba, Nelson Navarro of Curaçao, Dennis Richardson of St. Maarten and Ivo Opstelten, formulated the evaluation instruction during their last so-called Judicial Four Party Consultation in June this year. The evaluation committee will take into consideration the criteria and themes that were determined in this instruction. The committee, of which the members still have to be appointed, will consist of two chairpersons, to be appointed by the four ministers, and one member per country, to be appointed by the minister of the concerned country. The committee will be supported by a secretary and an executive secretariat.

Before December 1, the committee has to have a research plan for the evaluation which will be sent to the ministers for approval, followed by an intermediate report before June 1, 2015. The draft report of the evaluation of the four judicial kingdom laws should be ready before September 1, 2015, and the final report one month later.

The Dutch minister of Justice will send a copy of the research plan, the intermediate report, the draft report and the final report to the Dutch Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations, who has a coordinating role in the evaluation of the kingdom laws and the evaluation of the constitutional relations that went into effect on October 10, 2010.

The committee may call in the help of external experts. The ministers are giving the committee the leeway to involve all aspects that it deems important for an adequate interpretation of its tasks. The committee’s expenditures will be shared by the four countries. The decree to establish the Evaluation Committee Judicial Kingdom Laws will also be published in the gazettes of the Dutch Caribbean countries.

The kingdom laws also apply to the public entities Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba. They resort under the Netherlands. Curaçao and St. Maarten have already indicated that they are not happy with the practical execution of many of the kingdom laws that are in effect since the islands attained country status in 2010. Both countries are demanding a thorough evaluation of the kingdom laws, including the Financial Supervision Kingdom Law.