Samenvatting

In the past years there have been many affairs involving ministerial responsibility. Sometimes the ministers had to resign and sometimes they resigned themselves. The fire at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport which caused two ministers to resign, gave me reason to do research on this subject and to find out to what extent it is fair to put the responsibility for the mistakes made by civil servants with the Minister?
Ministerial responsibility is a core element of the Dutch parliamentary democracy and has been established in the Dutch Constitution under art. 42: "the King is inviolable; the ministers are responsible".
There are four types of ministerial responsibility:
• Political ministerial responsibility
• Criminal ministerial responsibility
• Financial ministerial responsibility
• Civil ministerial responsibility
This paper discusses two of the above responsibilities, namely the Political ministerial responsibility and the Criminal ministerial responsibility.
The final responsibility rests with the Minister if a mistake is made, even if it is not a mistake committed by the Minister himself. The question that hereby comes to mind is "to what extent is it fair to put the responsibility for the mistakes made by civil servants with the Minister?"
It is important hereby to look at what is possible: does the Constitution allow putting responsibility with civil servants in case of mistakes which are really made by them and the Minister could not prevent this situation? Some authors are against it, because ministerial responsibility is a core element of the Dutch parliamentary democracy and some authors are of the opinion that it is not realistic to put the responsibility with a Minister, because it is impossible that ministers are expected to be informed about everything within their ministries.
From the cases can be concluded that it is in practice not always clear with whom the responsibility rests. Besides, the problems which have caused the two disasters were weak and unsatisfactory information, so the disasters were not caused due to the mistakes of the ministers, but due the mistakes many different elements. On the one hand, it would also be good to give civil servants responsibility towards the parliament. On the other hand, it would be against the current Constitution.
To conclude, a solution would be that the ministers have to take their responsibility for every mistake, of course for mistakes which have big consequences, or the law would require rewriting, so civil servants could be held responsible.
In spite of some differences like the principal of legitimate expectations, one of the surrounding countries, namely Belgium is facing similar problems, when it comes to ministerial responsibility.