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The Principle of Transparency
and article 8:79 of GALA. Article 121 of the Constitution, in short, is about the obligation that judgments shall be held in public and specify the grounds on which they are based. Article 8:79 of GALA is about the obligation to send judgments to the parties and the possibilities for others to ask for judgments. It is about the question of whether one party can get information from the other party in the trial in which the first party wants to build up its argumentation. Mostly, there are specific regulations about transparency on this type of information. Finally, there is a topic where the principle of transparency has already functioned for a long time and in a rather different way. Sometimes the government uses market competition to get a contract with the lowest price, or at least with the best price- quality ratio. There are different examples in the field of economic law but we find it also in the field of public procurement law.13
3. Specification of the Concept Transparency and transparent governance are—as we saw earlier—related to democracy. In essence, three sub-principles are distinguished here: transparent meetings of the government; transparency of governmental acts; and transparency of governmental information.
(a) Transparent meetings of the government This paragraph will show how these three sub-principles have been specified in the Dutch legislation as a case study. Meanwhile, we have to make it clear that these three sub-principles are relevant for all the four powers in the state. First, the principle of transparency of meetings of the administration can be explained by an example of a regulation about the meetings in the Parliament of the Netherlands. In the Rules of the House of Parliament we read: Article 38. Breach of confidentiality 1. Secrecy shall be observed with regard to the content of confidential documents and the exchange of views in a private Committee meeting, with the exception of what the Committee states in its report. 2. The Committee may permit the members and the Ministers to disclose what they themselves have said in a private meeting, provided that the confidentiality of statements made by other persons is not thereby breached. 3. The Presidium may propose to the House that a member who has breached the confidentiality of a Committee meeting or of a document be excluded from all meetings of one or more Committees and/or be barred from receiving confidential documents for a maximum of one month. 4. The proposal may not be made until after the member to be excluded and the chairman of the Committee meeting whose confidentiality has been breached have been heard or in any event properly summoned to attend. 5. The proposal shall be put to the vote at the start of the first meeting after the day on which the Presidium decides to make the proposal. No debate shall be held on this proposal. 6. A decision to exclude a member shall be immediately communicated in writing by the President to the members of the House.
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Wibowo 2017, 21.
