Proeve van een herziening van de Grondwet offered

On Thursday 23 October, the Proeve van een grondwetsherziening voor de Sociale Grondrechten was presented in the States Hall of the Provincial Government Building.

The Proeve offers a proposal for revising fundamental social rights in the Netherlands that gives citizens more rights.

The welfare state is one of the great achievements of the last century: it offers security in terms of healthcare, social assistance, employment and housing. But there is also a downside: the welfare state does not always function as a safety net, but can also turn against people with unreasonable demands and strict rules and sanctions.

Enforcing fundamental rights in court

This is partly because citizens cannot enforce social fundamental rights in court in the same way as other fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression or the right to demonstrate.

The ' Proeve van een grondwetsherziening voor de Sociale Grondrechten' aims to change this, so that social fundamental rights do offer real guarantees to citizens. The constitutional revision relates to social fundamental rights in the areas of: legal aid, work, security of livelihood, a healthy environment, housing, health and democratic citizenship.

Some of the newly formulated fundamental rights are as follows:

'Everyone has the right to the means necessary to provide a dignified existence', 'Everyone has the right to protection of their health' and 'Everyone has a right to housing, to be regulated by law'.

Contributing to a dignified existence

The Proeve is an initiative of a number of legal scholars from various universities and representatives of civil society organisations, such as Grandparents for the Climate and the Dutch Democracy Coalition. A total of 23 scholars and organisations contributed to the Proeve.

The Proeve aims to contribute to ensuring that the Constitution guarantees that everyone can have a dignified existence.