THE HAGUE - It looks as if by mid-June a line can be drawn under 11 years of haggling about the establishment of a dispute settlement for the Kingdom.
The Dutch Senate has put the final debate on the draft Kingdom Disputes Act with Undersecretary Raymond Knops of Kingdom Relations on the agenda for the plenary meeting on 1 June. The vote will take place a week later. There is still the caveat that the minister must have answered the additional questions from the Senate in a timely and satisfactory manner. Knops took more than a year to answer the questions asked in the first round.
The Parliaments of Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten can delegate delegates to the debate who are given the opportunity to put forward the position of their parliament. The bill is a laboriously reached compromise that deviates in crucial aspects from what the countries had in mind in 2010 when it was agreed with the Netherlands that a dispute settlement would be introduced.