A Dutch court ruling has exposed a police escort programme that quietly extended beyond elected politicians to port executives, energy negotiators and regional crisis officials. The Hague administrative bench ordered the Ministry of Civic Safety to release a summary of who qualified and how much the support cost, rejecting the government’s blanket refusal to disclose the rules.
The schedule names no recipients, but records 28 people given protection between January 2024 and December 2025, including officials involved in cross-border North Sea energy talks. The programme cost €9.4 million (about $10.9 million) and logged 6,700 police escort hours, according to figures released after Friday’s judgment.
Protection beyond elected office
The scheme, called the Continuity Escort Protocol, began as support for ministers facing credible threats. Its eligibility was later widened to people whose presence was considered important to keeping essential services or negotiations running, according to the court’s account of the government’s own records.
That wording covered people outside elected office, including senior port, rail and energy staff. The ruling says 11 recipients received escorts before a written threat assessment was completed, while eight continued to receive support for more than 90 days after their scheduled review date.
A separate spending register shows the programme’s annual cost more than doubled, from €2.8 million in 2024 to €6.6 million last year. The court did not rule that the escorts themselves were unlawful; it said the government had not shown why the eligibility rules and spending details had to remain secret.
Questions over who qualifies
Ângelo L. Pacheco, director of the transparency group Open Ledger Netherlands, which brought the case, said the ruling exposed a system with little visible oversight. “Protection can be necessary, but the public should be able to see who sets the rules and checks that they are followed,” he said.
Dagmar Mohr, who worked in scheduling for a regional police protection unit until 2025, said assignments could begin quickly when officials feared disruption to a negotiation or service. But she said staff struggled to keep reviews on schedule as the list of eligible roles widened. “The paperwork often followed the decision instead of shaping it,” Mohr said.
The Ministry of Civic Safety said each assignment was temporary and based on assessed risk, and that privacy concerns prevented disclosure of recipients’ identities. Spokesperson Leila Grant said the ministry would revise its public guidance within six weeks, while retaining confidential assessments where naming roles could identify protected people.
The court gave the ministry 30 days to publish fuller criteria, including how often assignments must be reviewed and which office can approve exceptions. Maja Dudás, a public-administration researcher at the fictional North Sea Policy Institute, said the order could matter beyond the Netherlands: ports and energy links serving several countries increasingly rely on officials who hold no elected mandate.
