Victim rights in the Netherlands: Unconditional compliance or pursuing the national agenda?

The extent to which international and European Union (EU) obligations are transposed or implemented into national criminal law and practice can be theoretically framed with the help of three different ‘worlds of compliance’, that represent different archetypical implementation styles. Countries belonging to the first category – the ‘world of law observance’ – are prone to implement EU commitments in their national legal systems in a timely and correct fashion, even if these commitments are not in line with national policies. The second category consists of ‘world of domestic politics’ countries, which are only characterised by non-compliance if national interests collide with the aspiration to comply with EU requirements. It means that timely and correct transposition ensues when there is no conflict of interests, but in the case of conflicting domestic concerns, EU rules are more likely to be disobeyed. The final category involves the ‘world of transposition neglect’, where national standards are generally viewed as superior and non-compliance with EU standards is commonplace. If EU rules are transposed into the national legal system, this is often the result of external pressure, but even then, compliance is sometimes limited to the ‘law on paper’ without correct implementation in practice....