Het recht om te demonstreren
PhD ceremony: | mr. dr. B. (Berend) Roorda |
When: | September 15, 2016 |
Start: | 14:30 |
Supervisors: | prof. dr. J.G. Brouwer, prof. dr. A.E. Schilder |
Where: | Academy building RUG |
Faculty: | Law |

‘Government should have no say in what a demonstration is about’ - Right to demonstrate in sore need of change
The right to demonstrate, incorporated in the Constitution and worked out in greater detail in the Public Assemblies Act, is in sore need of change on eight points. The freedom to demonstrate could be expanded on various points. In addition, demonstrators themselves must also be made partially responsible for public order and there should be regulations for new forms of demonstrations, such as tent camps. Above all, government must not be allowed to have anything to do with what a demonstration is about. This is what the Groningen lawyer Berend Roorda claims in his PhD thesis, in which he compares the Dutch right to demonstrate to those of Germany and the United Kingdom. His recommendations are currently being discussed at the Ministry of Security and Justice.