Justice minister Ivo Opstelten has again dropped plans to set up a register of everyone in the Netherlands’ travel arrangements because of opposition from MPs, broadcaster Nos says on Friday.

The plan was included in the package of measures announced by the government last week to tackle radicalisation and to stop people travelling to Syria to join jihadist movements.

Instead, Opstelten says he plans to make better use of the currently available information about the travels of a ‘very limited’ group of jihadists. This would be done on the basis of ‘automatic and focused technological provisions’, Nos says.

The idea of a register was first mooted last year, but also shelved then because of opposition.

Judges

Opstelten also told parliament on Thursday that people who have been stripped of their Dutch nationality because they took part in jihadist campaigns will be able to go to court in an effort to have the decision reversed.

Dutch nationality can only be removed from people who are dual nationals, as are many people in the Dutch Moroccan community. However, many MPs are opposed to the minister’s plans to take away the right to a Dutch passport without the involvement of the legal process.

Despite the criticism, a majority of MPs back the minister’s proposals, which will now be worked into detailed legislation.

Nonsense

In a scathing review of the minister’s performance in parliament in Friday’s Volkskrant, columnist Sheila Sitalsing says just nine of the 38 measures announced to combat radicalism are new.

The minister answered his critics with lengthy replies and meandering sentences which at first appeared to refer to the subject but were actually ‘the instructions for putting up a complicated Ikea cupboard with two sliding doors’, Sitalsing wrote.

Striping people of their passports without the intervention of a judge is ‘actually logical if you understand what we are talking about’, she quoted the minister as saying.

Tracking down home-grown terrorists will not be done at the expense of other security service jobs because ‘it is not so much about extra capacity but extra quality’ and ‘it is about reprioritising which does not have an impact on other priorities’.