The Third Tuesday of September... or is it?

Every year on the third Tuesday of September, the Dutch king will conduct the "Troonrede", a speech written by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and his cabinet of ministers in which the plans of the government's upcoming year will be divulged. It is written in the laws that the government has to make these plans public and it is common tradition to do this during 'Prinsjesdag'. It is also common practice to keep these plans within government circles before this day. Unfortunately however, in recent years it has become less and less likely for the plans to stay secret to the public until the actual "Troonrede" and many details of the plans leak and are divulged earlier than intended. This year, the full plans of the government and even the communicationplan, being the description of how the cabinet is to respond to questions from the public, was leaked half a week before: "Prinsjesdag", leading to uncomfortable situations both within the House of Representatives, and the weekly meeting of the press with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. These two situations lead to two interesting examples on how to respond to the leaking.

In the first example, chamber president Miltenburg is confronted with the situation in which plans that are not yet divulged by the government are being entered into the debate as a result of the leaking. Since it is common practice not to discuss these facts before the "Troondrede" she first warns the politicians not to include any information that is not yet supposed to be public within the debate. Since the situation then becomes quite vague because of the previously mentioned information, she ultimately decided to suspend the debate until after the "Troonrede". Here it can be wondered whether or not the decision by the chamber president was a good one, or if she should just let the debate continue with or without the new information?

In the second example below, Prime Minister Rutte is confronted with the fact that the press is (already) in the possession of the communicationplan, detailing how the ministers are supposed to answer questions after the plans for the upcoming year had been divulged. Instead of ignoring these facts, he invites one of the more prominent political journalists to come and read a part of the communicationplan out loud instead. The reason for this is because Prime Minister Rutte no longer has to answer their questions now that they have the full plan for communication about the plans. For Public Relations, it would be interesting to ask whether or not this was the right thing to do, or if there were other options that Prime Minister Rutte could attend to instead?

A last Public Relation question related to these two examples is also the overall debate of how the future plans of the government should be divulged in the future. Is it still possible to release the details of the government plans on such an exact date without any of the details leaking? Or can anything be done to keep these plans from leaking early?

By Marc Dols