A plurality of voters (49.44%) voted against the law, resulting in its rejection. Voter turnout was 51.5%, above the 30% threshold for validation of the result.[1] As with the previous referendum, the referendum created a no-show paradox, where the 46.5% of voters who turned out to vote for the bill instead causing its rejection, by helping the referendum meet the quota. If voters who cast for ballots had instead refused to show up, the turnout of 27.5% would have been insufficient for the result to be declared valid.
Although the referendum itself was non-binding, Prime MinisterMark Rutte had promised to take a potential "no" vote into account prior to the referendum.[2]
Background
The draft Intelligence and Security Agencies Act 2017 was laid before the States General by the Government of the Netherlands at the end of 2016. On 14 February 2017, a majority in the House of Representatives voted in support of the act,[3] which was then approved in the Senate on 11 July.[4][5]
A campaign to obtain sufficient support declarations for a referendum was initiated by a group of students at the University of Amsterdam concerned about the sweeping surveillance powers granted to the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) under the law.[5] On 1 November 2017, the Electoral Council (Dutch: Kiesraad) announced that a sufficient number of signatures had been collected to trigger an advisory referendum on the tapping law, with 384,126 valid signatures, over 92 percent of those collected, well above the 300,000 required for a referendum.[8]
Party positions
The referendum comes after the formation of the Third Rutte cabinet following the 2017 general election,[8] with the coalition divided whether to hold a referendum on the law, Democrats 66 (D66) being the only one of the four coalition parties that voted against disregarding the result ahead of the referendum.[9]
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