Ferd Grapperhaus: Mayors sometimes wanted to ‘play cabinet’

Former Dutch Justice and Security Minister Ferd Grapperhaus asked civil servants to investigate how he could intervene in municipalities that did not enforce coronavirus measures. During his second public hearing before the Coronavirus Commission, he said he could no longer remember what the investigation concluded or what happened to the analysis.

The issue exposed a tension in the Dutch system. Responsibility for public order and local enforcement legally rests with mayors and municipalities, while ministers cannot simply take over those powers. The commission presented Grapperhaus with several examples of attempts to influence local decisions.

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from above

He was particularly unhappy after Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema said in a newspaper interview that the coronavirus access pass would be enforced only in cases of excesses. Grapperhaus said he could understand her position as an Amsterdam resident because the city has many young people, but added that he disliked her decision to express it so openly in the media.

Grapperhaus and Halsema clashed repeatedly during the pandemic. Halsema later told the commission that the national government imposed measures too much “from above” and paid too little attention to public sentiment. They also argued over a crowded Black Lives Matter demonstration on Amsterdam’s Dam Square in June 2020. Halsema said she felt abandoned after Grapperhaus called the event’s continuation “painful” in the media.

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painful

In the summer of 2021, Grapperhaus called Enschede Mayor Onno van Veldhuizen after about 180 of 600 visitors to the Aspen Valley nightclub contracted coronavirus. He suspected the venue had failed to check access passes properly and asked the mayor to close it. Grapperhaus later acknowledged that his premise was wrong, since one visitor had probably infected many others, and that the call had intruded into the mayor’s authority. He described it as “painful” and “unwise.”

Grapperhaus defended direct contact with mayors, saying ministers could apply pressure when dissatisfied and that mayors also called him. The hearing examined how those informal interventions tested the boundaries between national policy and local enforcement.

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unwise