Latest blog articles

The approach of drugs related problems in Maastricht, with the help of a specially equipped project Frontière, based on the decrease of visible nuisance in the city over the recent years, has so far been successful. ^{(This blog is only available in Dutch)} 

On the 4^th of April 2018 - in Strasbourg the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a groundbreaking recommendation concerning children of imprisoned parents.

The well-known British James Bulger case is ‘celebrating’ its 25^th anniversary. This revives the debate on how we should deal with children suspected and convicted of serious crimes.

On 21 December the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) held its official closing ceremony. The Tribunal is thereby a thing of the past. But it lives on in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, first and foremost in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), but also in Serbia and...

It would have been rather uncomfortable for the Court to rule that the Italian limitation periods for serious VAT-fraud cases should be set aside, wouldn't it? Can Taricco II be, after all, just a temporary (and unstable!) bridge over the troubled waters of the EU’s financial interests, soon to be...

Instead of protecting the victims of Burundi, the current government shields those who are responsible. The problem with such impunity is that it de facto “legalizes” violence as no accountability is created.

While there are no indications that the number of serious violations of integrity in law enforcement has increased over the past five years, the violations are getting more serious. Investigating authorities such as the Dutch National Police Internal Investigations Department are faced with more...

Where in 2010, about 40 per cent of the population downloaded music, the figure is now a quarter, partly because of the arrival of Spotify. The best strategy to avoid illegal downloading, according to Bastiaan Leeuw, is a mixture of punishment and temptation.

The increased flow of asylum applicants and migrants to the EU in recent years has not only put considerable pressure on the reception systems of Member States, but at the same time raises challenges regarding the integration of newcomers at the national and local level.

In a short memo, published on 22 March, the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD) expressed its view on how to handle the increasing number of asylum claims in the Netherlands, and more broadly in the EU, as well as the continuously tragic events concerning refugees that occur at the external borders of the EU...