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Privacy First warns Lower House of consequences of Wtmo bill

Article
Financial
17 January, 2025

In May this year, the Privacy First Foundation sent a fire letter to the House of Representatives On a bill on alleged 'undesirable' money flows to civil society organisations: the bill on transparency and countering undermining by civil society organisations (Wtmo). At the time, the parliamentary debate on this bill was scheduled for the end of May. Due to numerous objections from civil society, the debate on this bill had been stalled for years. Since last year, the bill has also been part of a broader study by the Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP). After our (and others') warnings, the parliamentary debate was postponed and is now scheduled again for early February this year. Reason for Privacy First to briefly and forcefully repeat our earlier warnings. Today Privacy First sent the letter below (pdf) to the House of Representatives.

Honourable MPs,

Privacy First Foundation notes with great disappointment that the proposal for the Law on transparency and countering subversion by civil society organisations (Wtmo, 35646) is still on the House of Representatives' agenda. This is despite the fact that a large number of non-profit organisations have since tried to make it clear to you that this is an unnecessary and harmful bill.

We would like to bring to your attention once again that the bill undermines the position of civil society in the Netherlands and will reduce the willingness to give:

The bill is inappropriate to counter unwanted financial influence and adds nothing to all the possibilities that already exist in Dutch law to this end (including Article 2:297(1) BW).
The proposal focuses mistakenly focusing exclusively on non-profit organisations and donations and makes the whole non-profit suspicious, while unwanted influence can also take place through financial channels other than donations.
The bill imposes a unnecessary additional administrative burden of personal data on to all non-profit organisations, while existing information (bank account details) should be sufficient and the need for more data ('origin', 'purpose') and a seven-year retention period have not been substantiated. The data protection risks for donors will increase exponentially as a result.
The new obligations to donations in kind to record and value can spell the end of volunteering for non-profit organisations, especially when that volunteering is done by professionals who want to use their skills in the social interest.
Wrongly, the general duty of administration is elaborated in a general measure the contents of which are not yet known.
The proposal includes powers for a large number of government bodies, while those powers do not belong there, and mature oversight of those bodies and adequate legal protection for citizens and civil society organisations is lacking.