From tough to tender? A new change in enforcement regime of the Dutch social security system

Over the past fifty years, enforcement of social security legislation in the Netherlands has been subject to big changes. The first change is from the assumption that all beneficiaries can be trusted and that there is no social security fraud, to the notion that ‘fraudsters’ must be punished. The Law on Fines, Measures and Recovery (1996) and the Act Tightening Enforcement and Sanctions Policy SZW legislation (‘Fraud Act’, 2013) were introduced in response. This led to a very strict enforcement regime. During the implementation of this stringent legislation it became clear that this enforcement regime may have been too strict. A new switch is set in motion in which the policy focus is more on customisation (maatwerk) and the human dimension (menselijke maat). The most recent proposal for this is the Social Security Enforcement Act.

In this blog post I focus on the perspective of enforcement officers on this newest change. By means of action research, consisting of group discussions with enforcement officers, a national questionnaire among the same professional group and a number of in-depth interviews with them, a picture was sketched of the enforcement officers themselves, their daily enforcement practice, the space they experience for customisation and human dimension, and their vision on the proposed Social Security Enforcement Act. This blog post describes the main findings of this research.