SINT MAARTEN/THE NETHERLANDS – A Protestant secondary school at an unnamed location was wrong to sack a teacher who had placed photos of himself naked online, judges in The Hague have decided.

The court said the photos were not pornographic and the school had infringed upon his right to freedom of expression by sacking him. The teacher was not given his job back but was awarded €10,000 in damages.

The man began teaching at the school in August 2023 and focused on pupils between the ages of 12 and 15.  At his interview, he told the school he also worked as a photographer and artist but not that his work involved nudes.

After his pupils found the photos online he showed them a film of himself and his partner naked as part of a discussion. The school decided to suspend him, saying its reputation had been damaged, and went to court to have him sacked.

That court agreed that the man could be sacked, not because the photos or film were pornographic but because the relationship between himself and the school had been irreversibly damaged.

However, the appeal court said on Tuesday that while it would have been better not to show the film, the school should not have suspended him on the spot.

By sacking him, the school had not only infringed upon his rights but damaged his prospects of a teaching career, the court said. The man has since left teaching and become a social worker.

(DutchNews)

SINT MAARTEN/THE NETHERLANDS – Dutch expats have called on the government to speed up the process of digitalising passport applications to spare them long and costly trips to their embassies.

The problem has been exacerbated in recent years by the decision to close smaller consulates in order to cut costs, so that Dutch citizens face long round trips to the capital city to renew their passports.

“We are one of the most advanced countries in the world when it comes to digitalisation, so why are we lagging so far behind behind in issuing passports abroad?” Antoinetta Sgherzi, chair of Stichting Goed, which campaigns on behalf of Dutch residents abroad, told AD.nl.

“In the UK you can extend your passport online, while in France they are working on a pilot scheme.”

Expats are urging the government to make the issue a priority ahead of the annual ambassadors’ conference in The Hague, which begins on January 28.

Miranda Jansen, who lives near Milan, told AD she had tried three times in the last year to renew her passport when the Dutch embassy’s travelling roadshow came to Milan, in order to avoid a 1400-kilometre round trip to Rome.

Lottery

“They can only deal with 63 people each time and you have to book ahead online,” she said.

“Every time I tried to make an appointment the system crashed, and after that there were no places left.”

Another man in his sixties, who lives in Spain, said his passport had expired last year, leaving him unable to access basic services such as a bank account.

“I withdrew all my money from my account and now I pay for my gas and electricity in cash,” he told the newspaper. “The tenants in my apartment can’t pay me via the bank either.”

Sgherzi called for the ambassadors to press the government to modernise the system and come up with temporary solutions in the meantime, such as pop-up embassies in areas with large numbers of expats.

“Applying for a passport shouldn’t be a lottery where you need to be lucky to secure an appointment,” she said.

(DutchNews)

SINT MAARTEN/THE NETHERLANDS – Schiphol airport was able to breach limits on noise pollution in 2023 because the maximum levels have never been enshrined in law, according to documents obtained by NRC.

The transport inspectorate ILT found that Schiphol had exceeded the limits over Uithoorn, which lies directly to the south-east of the airport, by 20% in 2023, but decided not to impose a sanction, despite penalising a similar breach in 2021.

Under guidelines drawn up by the government in 2015, the ILT was ordered not to enforce the limits as long as Schiphol compensated by diverting flights to runways that were further away from populated areas.

The so-called “tolerance policy” was introduced to give Schiphol more flexibility until new legally binding limits were specified in a new Aviation Act, provided the overall level of noise pollution did not increase.

But nearly 10 years and three cabinets later, the legislation has still not been finalised, partly because the airport is still waiting to receive an environmental permit.

Aviation experts say the failure to enforce the rules has allowed Schiphol to dodge its responsibilities to restrict noise pollution and disturbances over residential areas.

Tolerance approach

The ILT, meanwhile, say its hands have been tied by directives from successive ministers to continue with the laissez-faire approach until the law is changed. In 2023, caretaker transport minister Mark Harbers instructed the inspectorate to maintain the tolerance approach “until further notice”.

Herman Bröring, professor of administrative law at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, told NRC: “The starting point is that the ILT is only allowed to tolerate [the infringements] if Schiphol abides by the flights policy.

“That hasn’t happened and the ILT should intervene. What is happening now is that they are looking for workarounds to avoid enforcing the rules. The government ends up drifting further away.”

Last March the district court in The Hague ordered the ILT to enforce the current rules within 12 months, in a case brought by more than 3,000 local residents.

Court cases

The court said that the government was breaching local people’s human rights under European law by failing to protect them from the noise of low-flying aircraft.

The government has appealed against the judgment and asked the court to extend the deadline of 12 months, arguing it is not feasible.

The new Aviation Act, which would set new legally binding noise pollution limits, has also been held up by legal challenges to the environmental permit which the government issued in 2023.

The permit requires Schiphol to take measures to reduce its nitrogen compound emissions in order to comply with European limits and is one of the major factors determining how many flights can take off and land at the airport each year.

The ILT said in 2022 that the number of flights should be capped at between 420,000 and 460,000 a year. But last year 470,000 flight movements were recorded at Schiphol and infrastructure minister Barry Madlener has raised the maximum for 2025 by another 8,000.

(DutchNews)

SINT MAARTEN/THE NETHERLANDS – A museum in Limburg has decided not to return five ornamental human skulls taken by missionaries from Papua New Guinea after the local population turned down the offer.

The Missiemuseum in Steyl investigated the origin of the artefacts in the wake of the controversy surrounding a skull from Benin that was sold by an auction house in Amsterdam.

Auctioneers De Zwaan pledged not to put any more human remains up for sale after 200 scientists and experts in looted art signed a letter of protest in December.

Paul Voogt, curator of the Missiemuseum, travelled to the Vatican and Papua New Guinea with funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to trace the origins of the five skulls.

But when he arrived in the country he found that the local people were not interested in repatriating the artworks, which were taken by missionaries from the Society of the Divine Word at the start of the 20th century.

“Our skulls were obtained in a way that we no longer perceive as ethical, but that we can’t exactly label art theft either,” Voogt said.

“They think it was too long ago, no longer know who they were and they have made a large number of new skulls in the meantime. Moreover, they could be the skulls of enemies and people believe that could bring bad luck.”

The museum now plans to carry out X-ray scans of the skulls to see if it can find out if their owners were the victims of headhunting, which was practised in Papua New Guinea at the turn of the last century.

Jos van Beurden, senior researcher into colonial collections and restitution at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, told NOS he was not surprised the local community declined to take the skulls back.

“I’ve seen it in other restitutions: people need to get used to the idea that it’s coming back. They have lost their belief in it and colonialism has made them suspicious,” he said.

(DutchNews)