Mayors and the Public Prosecution Service will have the right to request access to the funding of institutions that receive money from outside the European Union. Supervision of foreign money flows, for example to the organizations behind mosques, should prevent institutions from receiving this money to incite hatred, discrimination or intolerance.
The law that makes this possible was sent to the Lower House on Monday. The parliamentary interrogation committee on undesirable influence from unfree countries (Pocob) of the Lower House, chaired by CDA MP Michel Rog, concluded in June this year that there is undesirable influence as a result of foreign money flows to institutions in the Netherlands. The final report was entitled “(In) visible influence”.
The possibility of a law was also already included in the coalition agreement of 2017. Minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection, VVD) gives the motivation for the bill: ‘Organizations that are open to this kind of donation should not just get away with it.’ the cabinet is a threat to the freedoms of the democratic constitutional state.
The Social Organizations Transparency Act, as it is officially called, gives the mayor and the Public Prosecution Service the authority to inquire about foreign donations from a social organization. This concerns money flows from countries outside the EU or the European Economic Area (the EU plus Liechtenstein, Iceland and Norway). If these cash flows turn out to be substantial, information should be provided about the person who made the donations.
The interrogation committee found that lenders from the Gulf states, among others, are trying to spread fundamentalist messages. This can be done through mosques or associated informal weekend schools. The Muslim communities in the Netherlands are also influenced by sending and paying imams and preachers. “The payer decides,” said the commission. “The findings definitely give us cause for concern,” said President Rog, who presented his report “with urgency” to President Khadija Arib.
This ‘problematic behavior’ for the legal order, as Dekker describes it, has been a topic of discussion for years. The committee was accused of conducting an investigation against Islam and thus interfering with freedom of religion. In turn, the commission warned of the danger of “parallel societies”. The cabinet sees the supervision of and tackling money flows as an opportunity to counteract the latter. An organization that does not cooperate is guilty of an economic crime. Transverse directors risk a board ban of up to 5 years.
Two weeks ago, the European Council of Justice ministers decided to bring about similar legislation in a European context, in order to avoid using EU countries as a springboard without this legislation. Unfree countries themselves do not allow foreign financing of, for example, Christian churches.
