The Netherlands

This chapter analyses the Dutch bottom-up legal framework that connects to OLAF’s EU top-down legal framework which was analysed in Chap. 2 . This third chapter, together with the subsequent Chap. 4 , constitutes Part III of this book: ‘Bottom-Up: The National Legal Frameworks’. This bottom-up analysis focuses on providing answers to the analytical sub-research questions raised in Chap. 1 . A study of composite enforcement procedures, which by definition comprises the interlinkages between legal orders, cannot satisfy itself only with a study of EU law; it also demands an examination of national law. The purpose of this chapter and the next is to provide the second, ‘bottom half’ of the answers to the analytical sub-research questions. Whereas in the previous chapter, I looked down from the top of OLAF’s legal framework (‘the cathedral’) to see where and how deep down its legal framework links up with national law and authorities, this chapter—and, again, also the next—aims to see how national law in turn links up and latches onto OLAF’s legal framework and also where it fails to do so from the perspective of national law (the ‘bazaar’). The findings of this chapter, together with those of Chaps. 2 and 4 , give me all the (analytical) pieces necessary to see whether the person concerned’s fundamental rights are protected in composite enforcement procedures (the evaluative goal) and, eventually, to see whether the OLAF and national legal frameworks need to be changed and, if so, how this change is to be pursued (the normative goal). The normative and evaluative goals and accompanying sub-research questions are the subject of Chaps. 5 and 6 , respectively. Section 3.2 examines OLAF’s institutional partner in the Netherlands, its role and functioning, and how it fits into OLAF’s Union law institutional design and architecture and the mould it lays for its OLAF’s national partners. Section 3.3 discusses the way in which OLAF gathers evidence in the Netherlands in its investigations. Section 3.4 discusses how Dutch authorities, in the areas of customs and structural funds, gather evidence in the context of OLAF’s investigation and coordination cases. Section 3.5 deals with the punitive follow-up to OLAF’s investigation or coordination cases in the Netherlands. Section 3.6 examines the admissibility of OLAF-obtained evidence in Dutch punitive proceedings. Section 3.7, offers some concluding remarks.