Important Information
Netherlands

Awb Guarantee Strengthening Act

Awb Guarantee Strengthening Act

Closed Law Consultation

In a nutshell

This bill amends the General Administrative Law Act. This adjustment aims to encourage the government to make decisions easier for citizens to understand, to empathize more with the citizen when carrying out tasks and to take a less formal approach.

This consultation gives everyone who works in practice with the General Administrative Law Act the opportunity to comment on the bill. This is subject to a period of six months. After the consultation, another weighting will take place based on the responses, the feasibility test and the budgetary consequences. Alternatives that are provided will be involved. The proposal is a follow-up to the cabinet response to the report of the Parliamentary Childcare Allowance Interrogation Committee and motions accepted by the House of Representatives.

Consultation data

Consultation start date 01-02-2024End date of consultation 31-07-2024Status closedType of consultation Act Organization Ministry of Internal Affairs and Kingdom Relations, Ministry of Justice and Security Chain ID 12695Topics Administrative Law

Who is important to

The bill is important for applicants and other stakeholders in government decisions, for implementing organizations and for judges. The feasibility will be tested during the consultation by means of implementation tests. For this purpose, a uniform assessment framework has been drawn up, which can be found on this website. These implementation tests, as well as the consultation responses, may be a reason for adapting the proposals if they can better achieve the goals to be achieved with the bill.

What's changing?

The bill contains the following parts:

  1. A new general provision is being inserted that instructs the government to act as a servant in carrying out its duties. This is about treatment and help, because the government knows the rules better than citizens.
  2. Article 3:4, paragraph 2, Awb includes the principle of proportionality. This means that a rule is not strictly applied if a file shows that the consequences of a decision are disproportionate to the purpose to be served by the decision. This already existing article will be expanded so that in the future, a proportionality test (according to the existing case law of the administrative court) will also be possible under a rule from a formal law. This is a valve. It does not mean that the law is set aside, but only that governments are given the opportunity to remove unjust consequences of stringent application of a rule.
  3. People get a claim to fix obvious writing or math errors in a decision that is easy to fix.
  4. Government decisions are intelligibly motivated.
  5. Financial decisions with a direct impact on the direct spending margin will be contacted in advance or the correct information will be assumed.
  6. The rules on administrative financial debts take more account of citizens' assets, including by stimulating payment arrangements if there is no payment space and people run into additional problems in the event of a recovery.
  7. There will be more legal room to consider an overrun of time excusable when filing an appeal.
  8. In order to prevent unnecessary procedures, it is proposed, among other things, that administrative bodies. indicate in a decision how to get in touch with an official who knows your file, b. first consult with the objector in the event of an appeal, and/or contact the objector in the event of an appeal filed too late to see if there are reasons to consider the deadline excusable.
  9. The citizen's position in administrative court proceedings is strengthened by the possibility to give a citizen the opportunity to further substantiate their grounds of appeal or to make statements made plausible (the citizen loop).

Relevant documents

https://www.internetconsultatie.nl/waarborgfunctieawb/document/12231https://www.internetconsultatie.nl/waarborgfunctieawb/document/12200https://www.internetconsultatie.nl/waarborgfunctieawb/document/12358https://www.internetconsultatie.nl/waarborgfunctieawb/document/12189https://www.internetconsultatie.nl/waarborgfunctieawb/document/12188https://www.internetconsultatie.nl/waarborgfunctieawb/document/12184

Supporting documents

The following documents provide additional information. You are unable to comment on these documents.

Publication

Responses will be published during the consultation. Only those comments that have been indicated, by the contributor, that they may be public will be published.

Comments on this consultation53 public

See all comments

https://www.internetconsultatie.nl/waarborgfunctieawb/reacties

Date
20 August 2024
Author (s)
research
Source
No items found.
Readers' comments
No items found.