The Dutch government has withdrawn a law that would have given grandparents more rights to see their grandchildren in family disputes.
The law was passed by the lower house two years ago, having been drafted during Mark Rutte’s last cabinet term by D66 legal protection minister Franc Weerwind.
Currently grandparents can apply to a court for access rights, but they must satisfy the judge that they previously had extensive contact with their grandchildren.
The bill would have removed this requirement to prevents grandparents being cut off as a result of divorces and other conflicts within families.
But it ran into criticism in the Senate, where members were concerned that it prioritised the rights of grandparents over children.
Claudia van Bruggen, junior minister for legal protection, agreed to withdraw the bill during a debate in the upper house on Tuesday, ahead of a scheduled vote. “If there are doubts, we shouldn’t do it,” she said.
“Children lose out”
“It‘s almost always the children who lose out,” said GroenLinks-PvdA senator Jeroen Recourt. “It means they end up in a tug-of-war and a conflict of loyalties between their parents and grandma and grandpa.”
Robert van Gasteren, of the farmers’ party BBB, said it was likely to lead to more court cases in which parents would be disadvantaged. “It’s very hard for parents to show that there is no connection,” he said.
The right-wing liberal VVD questioned why other family members, such as brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles were not being given the same rights even if they were more involved in children’s lives than their grandparents.
But the Christian Democrats (CDA), who are in coalition with D66 and VVD, were disappointed by Van Bruggen’s decision.
CDA senator Madeleine van Toorenburg called on the junior minister to act “for all those grandparents, a lot of whom have since died, who pleaded with us to lower the threshold.”
