The long-running conflict between former Speaker of the House Khadija Arib and the Presidium of the House of Representatives has been resolved through mediation. Chamber chairman Thom van Campen (VVD) writes in an Letter to Parliament sent on Wednesday that “the House of Representatives and Ms Arib have jointly reached a solution to this dispute.”
In 2022 revealed NRC that the Presidium had unanimously decided to conduct an external factual investigation into reports of transgressive behavior by Arib during her time as Speaker of the House (2016-2021). Two anonymous letters about Arib’s behavior prompted the investigation, which was conducted by the independent Hoffmann agency. Arib (PvdA) resigned as Member of Parliament. Of the seventeen incidents described in the two anonymous letters, the Hoffmann researchers ultimately managed to confirm sixteen.
Arib’s lawyers argued that the clerk and the presidium were not authorized to investigate the former Speaker of the House and filed a lawsuit. But last year the court decided in The Hague that the political-official top of the House of Representatives had even been “obligated” to investigate “the concrete signals” about Arib’s behavior as Speaker of the House. According to the court, the House of Representatives has a “duty of care” for the more than six hundred civil servants who work there. None of Arib’s demands were met.
Arib subsequently appealed the verdict. Her lawyers, the couple Carry and Geert-Jan Knoops, argued that the court had legitimized the Hoffmann investigation and thus “created a dangerous precedent in which representatives can be declared outlaws on the basis of anonymous accusations.”
The pending appeal has now been dropped. “This brings the procedure to an end for all parties involved,” Van Campen writes. Due to the confidential nature of mediation, no substantive announcements can be made about it, according to the Speaker of the House. A solution was “in the interest of all involved,” says Van Campen. “It fits in with the institution of the House of Representatives, which has an important role model in society, and with the stature of Ms Arib as a former chairman and Member of Parliament.”
