The Dutch Crisis and Recovery Act: Economic Recovery and Legal Crisis?

14 Pages Posted: 31 Jan 2011 Last revised: 22 Apr 2011

Date Written: Deacember 30, 2010

Abstract

In the Netherlands, the 2010 Crisis and Recovery Act aims at speeding up decision-making on a wide variety of activities, hoping that after the financial and economic crisis is over, projects can immediately be carried out, without any delay caused by legal procedures in court or elsewhere. The Act meets great criticism because it allegedly curtails citizen’s procedural rights, because it focuses almost exclusively on environmental standards as ‘obstructing’ standards that need to be removed, and because it infringes international and EU law. In this article, the legal critique on the Act is analyzed. The conclusion is that the sense of urgency enables the legislature to implement innovations and long time pending amendments to existing legislation. Most issues, however, have not been fully thought through. Many legal questions will arise when implementing the Act, which will slow down projects, rather than speed them up. It is hard to predict whether the positive effects of the Crisis and Recovery Act outweigh the negative ones? Much depends on how authorities will actually apply the Act. When they enthusiastically apply the Act’s full potential, the effect of the Act in sum will be negative. In that case, the Act may help the economy to recover, but it will bring crisis to the legal system and it will not contribute to a sustainable development.

JEL Classification: K32

Suggested Citation

Verschuuren, Jonathan, The Dutch Crisis and Recovery Act: Economic Recovery and Legal Crisis? (Deacember 30, 2010). Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal, Vol. 13, No. 5, 2010, Tilburg Law School Research Paper No. 04/2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1751848

Jonathan Verschuuren (Contact Author)

Tilburg Law School ( email )

Tilburg, 5000 LE
Netherlands

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