Dutch Contribution Research Articles

Policy Note: Strengthening Tax Systems in Developing Countries: The Dutch Contribution

The Netherlands has long faced criticism for its role in facilitating tax avoidance through its network of double taxation treaties (DTTs), particularly regarding developing countries, e.g., recently in a report of the Tax Justice Network (TJN). A review of the general Dutch tax policy shows that the country has taken several steps to reform its DTTs, undertaken domestic reforms to address tax avoidance issues, and has been offering tax-related capacity development (CD) programmes to developing nations. The authors ascertain from the results of an analysis of the parliamentary debate in terms of the contents of DTTs with developing countries and changes in domestic law as well as interviews with several stakeholders in the Netherlands and in developing countries show that the Netherlands is still likely to play a prominent role in global tax avoidance. This applies despite the significant changes in policy and substantive and procedural law. Not all loopholes have been closed, and adopting anti-abuse clauses in DTTs with developing countries – a central part of the Dutch response – has been somewhat disappointing. Moreover, the process of providing tax-related CD is not optimal, and tensions remain regarding the goals that the Netherlands attempts to pursue in tandem, potentially leading to policy incoherence. Moreover, unilateral action is unlikely to result in a reduction of global tax avoidance as financial flows – and therewith tax avoidance – are likely to shift to other countries. The global minimum tax (GMT) and other parts of the two-pillar proposal are more likely to offer a breakthrough for certain types of tax avoidance.Hence, a continued international dialogue on tax matters is needed to address all types of tax avoidance. In the parliamentary discussion on this topic, the Dutch Secretary of State for Finance reconfirmed the policy to assist developing countries in strengthening their tax systems in respect of the GMT through being in favour of a broader scope of Amount B, providing technical assistance in the implementation process of Pillars 1 and 2, and through the OECD’s Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) project. The objective of this article is to add to the policy discussion on how to strengthen the tax systems of developing countries. Tax avoidance, double taxation treaties (DTTs), international tax policy, Tax avoidance, double taxation treaties (DTTs), international tax policy, capacity development (CD), anti-abuse clauses, policy coherence, developing countries, BEPS, Addis Tax Initiative (ATI), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

Invasive coronary physiology: aDutch tradition.

Invasive coronary physiology has been applied since the early days of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, and has become a rapidly emerging field of research. Many physiology indices have been developed, tested in clinical studies, and are now applied in daily clinical practice. Recent clinical practice guidelines further support the use of advanced invasive physiology methods to optimise the diagnosis and treatment of patients with acute and chronic coronary syndromes. This article provides a succinct review of the history of invasive coronary physiology, the basic concepts of currently available physiological parameters, and will particularly highlight the Dutch contribution to this field of invasive coronary physiology.

Ferm, doch onopvallend

Abstract Firm, but inconspicuous. The Netherlands and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (1973-1983) This article reconsiders the role of the Netherlands in the Conference on Security and Co-operation (CSCE) in Europe in times of both détente (1973-1979) and crisis (1980-1983). This conference was meant to channel the Cold War in a more peaceful direction, but soon turned into a clash between Western and Eastern European values. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this article argues that the Dutch were not primarily concerned with advancing human rights, but rather with maintaining Western European unity and mediating between the members of the European Community and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Moreover, the Dutch priority shifted from European Political Co-operation during détente to a greater emphasis on NATO and co-operation with the Americans in times of crisis. Pragmatic rather than idealistic, the Dutch contribution to peace in Cold War Europe consisted more in its willingness to compromise than in its principled defence of human rights.

Biological & Geological Collections as a Research Infrastructure: A Dutch case

Within the Netherlands, large scale digitization efforts of natural science collections have taken place in recent years. This has led to a wealth of digital information on natural science collections. Still, large quantities of collection data remain untapped and undigitized. The usage of all these digital collections data as driver for science and society remains underexplored. Especially important, is the opportunity for such data to be combined and/or enriched with other data types with the aim to empower different user groups. A consortium of Dutch partners has committed themselves in working together to make biological and geological collections into a joint research infrastructure, underpinning other research infrastructures and scientific uses also beyond the biodiversity research domain. This consortium combines the Dutch contribution to the Distributed Systems of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo), LifeWatch, the Catalogue of Life and the Global Biodiversity Information facility, under the coordination of the Netherlands Biodiversity Information Facility. As part of a preparatory project for DiSSCo, funded by the Dutch science council, we connected the different users groups of collection managers (data providers), scientists (end-users), IT-specialists and policymakers. With collection managers we explored how to move towards an overview of all natural science collections in the Netherlands. In addition, we studied to what extent collection holdings of different musea could be combined, managed, and shared into one research infrastructure. Using a research data management cycle perspective, we surveyed and interviewed the Dutch research community for the barriers and opportunities in using natural science collections and related data. The outcomes of the project should lead to the next steps in creating a more comprehensive and inclusive biodiversity research data infrastructure in the Netherlands that interacts seamlessly with existing international research infrastructures, including DiSSCo.

Innovative Exuberance: Fluctuations in the Painting Production in the 17th-Century Netherlands

The surprising and rapid flowering of Dutch art and the Dutch art market from the late 16th century to the mid-17th century have propelled scholars to quantify the volume of production and to determine the source of its growth. However, existing studies have not explored the use of known paintings to specify and visualize the fluctuations of painting production in the Dutch Republic. Employing data mining techniques to leverage the most comprehensive datasets of Netherlandish paintings (RKD), this paper visualizes and analyzes the trend of painting production in the Northern Netherlands throughout the 17th-century. The visualizations verify the existing observations on the market saturation and industry stagnation in 1630–1640. In spite of this market condition, the growth of painting production was sustained until the 1660s. This study argues that the irrational risk-taking behavior of painters and the over-enthusiasm for painting in the public created a “social bubble” and the subsequent contraction of the production was a market correction back to a stable state. However, these risk-taking attitudes during the bubble time spurred exuberant artistic innovations that highlight the Dutch contribution to the development of art.

The Whole is More than the Sum of its Parts

The Whole is More than the Sum of its Parts Deborah Hamer (bio) Wim Klooster. The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016. 419 pp. illustrations, maps. $35.00. For many American historians, New Netherland resides at the center of an otherwise dimly contoured Dutch Atlantic world. There are many legitimate reasons for this. The search for a national narrative that could root the United States' multicultural and polyglot present in the past drew early attention to the diversity and toleration that distinguished the Middle Colonies, including New Netherland, from either New England or the Chesapeake. New York's rise in the eighteenth century as a British imperial hub and its current position as one of world's preeminent cities have also encouraged interest in its past. Translation projects—most recently the superb, painstaking work of Charles Gehring and Janny Venema of the New Netherland Institute in Albany—have accomplished the difficult work of making documents associated with New Netherland accessible to those who cannot read Dutch. And recent works on New Netherland like Susanah Shaw Romney's New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth Century America (2014) have shown that New Netherland's history and the Dutch archives tell stories that change the way we think about the entire Atlantic world. As productive as this focus on New Netherland has been, it scarcely scratches the surface of Dutch colonial aspirations in the seventeenth century. With the publication of Wim Klooster's deeply researched, brilliant book, English speaking readers will finally have the chance to explore the rest of a geography that extended well beyond New Netherland and North America. Central to Klooster's work in an effort to write a history that can encompass all of the highly variegated, sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful Dutch activities on the Atlantic rim. Klooster has written extensively about Curaçao and its inter-imperial trade, and it is perhaps because of this geographical orientation that he has been able to write a history that is at once Atlantic, hemispheric, and transnational. In particular, Klooster aims "to put Brazil front and center in the Dutch Atlantic" (p. 7). In 1957, C.R. Boxer's The Dutch in Brazil 1624-1654 offered a [End Page 12] political history of the Dutch colony, and it seemed for decades that his would be the last word. Only recently has the colony re-emerged as a subject of significant inquiry, first with the appearance of Mark Meuwese's Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: Dutch-Indigenous Alliances in the Atlantic World, 1595-1674 (2011) and then the work of Michiel van Groesen, particularly the wonderful Amsterdam's Atlantic: Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil (2016), which shows the outsized place of Brazil in the Dutch imagination. Klooster draws together a number of strands in the secondary literature to show how entanglements that would long outlast Brazil—the Dutch trade in enslaved people on the Gold Coast and the concomitant rise of Curaçao as a center for inter-imperial trade, the arrival of Jews in the larger Atlantic world, and Dutch plantation society in Suriname—came out of this ultimately failed project. Focusing on the half-century from 1620 to 1670, Klooster also asks us to consider how the Dutch mattered at a key moment in Atlantic history, which he terms "the Great Transformation." This was the moment when the Iberian powers lost their monopoly on transatlantic voyaging and—much to their dismay—northern Europeans established trading networks and colonies in territory that the Iberians thought of as their own. The degree of difficulty involved in answering this question cannot be overstated, as it requires knowledge of the historiography and archives of the Dutch as well as the Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French empires, and Klooster does not disappoint. He offers a compelling yet measured assessment of the Dutch contribution, arguing that the Dutch hastened and affected the shape of this reconfigured Atlantic that came to include English, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But they were also only one of a number of actors who helped...

A Dutch contribution to early interpretations of Meteor Crater, Arizona, USA – Marten Edsge Mulder’s ignored 1911 paper

Following the first scientific descriptions in the late nineteenth century, the origin of the curious structure currently known as Meteor Crater (or Barringer Crater) in Arizona (USA) remained controversial until well into the twentieth century. Within the context of commercial mining, Daniel Moreau Barringer’s view that it recorded a substratum-penetrative meteorite impact (with the cosmic body still preserved) was commonly discarded. Marten Edsge Mulder (1847–1928), Dutch professor of medicine, found fault with Barringer’s non-explosive model. In 1911, Mulder advanced, in an ignored paper written in Dutch, a novel model of an explosive meteorite (‘meteor’ in Mulder’s terminology), during which the meteoroid front had been initially hollowed out in a bowl-like fashion on its passage through the Earth’s atmosphere. As a result of the greatly compressed gases in this reshaped part, the bolide would eventually disintegrate in a bomb-like blast. Even though his model is, physically speaking, just as implausible as other early interpretations, Mulder concluded that only a limited (if any) primary mass of iron-nickel would have been preserved at Meteor Crater. In doing so, he predicted the bankruptcy (in 1929) of a mining business set up on the basis of Barringer’s concept that large meteorite-hosted ore resources would be found at the crater site. In a single discussion of this original contribution (in 1913) by his fellow countryman, Jan Frederik Niermeyer, professor of geography, a seismically induced origin of the unique structure is preferred - another unnoticed Dutch contribution to the early interpretations of this ”natural curiosity”.

Cohort profile: LIFEWORK, a prospective cohort study on occupational and environmental risk factors and health in the Netherlands

PurposeLIFEWORK is a large federated prospective cohort established in the Netherlands to quantify the health effects of occupational and environmental exposures. This cohort is also the Dutch contribution to the...

‘Germanje’: Dutch empire-building in Nazi-occupied Europe

ABSTRACTRecent historiography on Nazism has taken what has been coined ‘the imperial turn’. The key issue at stake is to what extent Germany’s expansionist policy between 1939 and 1945 could be considered a variant of the more general historical phenomenon of (modern) imperialism. Over the course of the last two decades, all sorts of continuities and parallels between traditional European colonialism and Nazi imperialism have been analysed. In these studies, a top-down approach is prevalent, concentrating on ‘Berlin’, Nazi politics and leaders. This article chooses a different perspective, bringing actors of a lower level to the fore. The focus is on the Dutch contribution to the Nazi policy of ‘Germanization’ of the occupied East. Between the summers of 1941 and 1944, over five thousand Dutch civilians voluntarily left their homeland to be employed in the so-called German occupied eastern territories. Although their contracts were often temporary, they were seen (and saw themselves) as the first group of ‘pioneers’ of a giant colonizing project. This article investigates the Dutch organizations coordinating their recruitment and employment, and zooms in on the expectations and experiences of individual recruits. With the Dutch case as an example, the article points at the broader historical context of the Dutch efforts. At the same time, it shows that this junior partner of the German had his own colonial agenda. The incompatibility of both agendas inevitably led to false expectations, caused a general sense of disillusionment on both sides and led to many frictions ‘on the spot’.

Introduction: Planetary geosciences, the Dutch contribution to the exploration of our solar system

Planetary geoscience was effectively born when Christiaan Huygens took his first look at planet Mars on Friday 28 November 1659. As one of the leading scientists of his time, Huygens was known for constructing his own telescopes to observe stars, planets and nebulae whenever the clear and spacious skies above the Netherlands allowed. Huygens observed the planet Mars during the heydays of its 1659 opposition. On the night of 28 November he succeeded in sketching the first albedo feature on a different planet in our solar system. The roughly triangular dark-coloured patch was originally christened the Hourglass Sea, suggesting it to be an area of open water. Perhaps the landscape surrounding him in the Netherlands prompted Huygens to interpret the newly discovered feature as a wet area on the planet's surface. The attribution of traits to an albedo feature on another planet based on terrestrial landscapes may well be considered as the first-ever attempt at ‘comparative planetology’. The albedo feature can still be recognised at the surface of Mars today as Syrtis Major. Any modest amateur telescope can provide a view superior to that of Huygens’, allowing the observation of the very first geological feature ever identified on another rocky planet.

0064 "Ein großer Vorsprung gegenüber Deutschland": Die niederländischen Architekten auf der Bauhausausstellung von 1923 in Weimar

This article discusses the Dutch contribution to the International Architecture Exhibition that was part of the Bauhaus Manifestation in 1923. The Dutch architect J.J.P. Oud, together with the director of the school in Weimar, Walter Gropius, decided which architects would be asked to participate and send in works. Oud selected the works of these architects according to his own criteria. He had a specific agenda that was dictated by the position he had in the Netherlands and abroad as an advocate of modernist architecture. His interest was not to show what was really going on in general in the Netherlands but to illustrate that there was a strong movement in the country towards the development of a new architecture based on the use of new materials. The article positions this radical attitude of Oud and confronts it with how German architects, who were particularly informed, looked at the situation in the neighbouring country.

The origin of ambient particulate matter concentrations in the Netherlands

Particulate matter poses a significant threat to human health. To be able to develop effective mitigation strategies, the origin of particulate matter needs to be established. The regional air quality model LOTOS-EUROS, equipped with a newly developed labeling routine, was used to establish the origin of PM10 and PM2.5 in the Netherlands for 2007–2009 at the source sector level, distinguishing between national and foreign sources. The results suggest that 70–80% of modeled PM10 and 80–95% of PM2.5 in the Netherlands is of anthropogenic origin. About 1/3 of anthropogenic PM10 is of Dutch origin and 2/3 originates in foreign countries. Agriculture and transport are the Dutch sectors with the largest contribution to PM10 mass in the Netherlands, whereas the foreign contribution is more equally apportioned to road transport, other transport, industry, power generation and agriculture. For the PM2.5 fraction, a larger share is apportioned to foreign and anthropogenic origin than for PM10, but the same source sectors are dominant. The national contribution to PM levels is significantly higher in the densely populated Randstad area than for the country on average and areas close to the borders. In general, the Dutch contribution to the concentration of primary aerosol is larger than for secondary species. The sectoral origin varies per component and is location and time dependent. During peak episodes, natural sources are less important than under normal conditions, whereas especially road transport and agriculture become more important.

Liver Function Tests and Risk Prediction of Incident Type 2 Diabetes: Evaluation in Two Independent Cohorts

BackgroundLiver function tests might predict the risk of type 2 diabetes. An independent study evaluating utility of these markers compared with an existing prediction model is yet lacking.Methods and FindingsWe performed a case-cohort study, including random subcohort (6.5%) from 38,379 participants with 924 incident diabetes cases (the Dutch contribution to the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition, EPIC-NL, the Netherlands), and another population-based cohort study including 7,952 participants with 503 incident cases (the Prevention of Renal and Vascular End-stage Disease, PREVEND, Groningen, the Netherlands). We examined predictive value of combination of the Liver function tests (gamma-glutamyltransferase, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and albumin) above validated models for 7.5-year risk of diabetes (the Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg, the KORA study). Basic model includes age, sex, BMI, smoking, hypertension and parental diabetes. Clinical models additionally include glucose and uric acid (model1) and HbA1c (model2). In both studies, addition of Liver function tests to the basic model improved the prediction (C-statistic by∼0.020; NRI by∼9.0%; P<0.001). In the EPIC-NL case-cohort study, addition to clinical model1 resulted in statistically significant improvement in the overall population (C-statistic = +0.009; P<0.001; NRI = 8.8%; P<0.001), while addition to clinical model 2 yielded marginal improvement limited to men (C-statistic = +0.007; P = 0.06; NRI = 3.3%; P = 0.04). In the PREVEND cohort study, addition to clinical model 1 resulted in significant improvement in the overall population (C-statistic change = 0.008; P = 0.003; NRI = 3.6%; P = 0.03), with largest improvement in men (C-statistic change = 0.013; P = 0.01; NRI = 5.4%; P = 0.04). In PREVEND, improvement compared to clinical model 2 could not be tested because of lack of HbA1c data.ConclusionsLiver function tests modestly improve prediction for medium-term risk of incident diabetes above basic and extended clinical prediction models, only if no HbA1c is incorporated. If data on HbA1c are available, Liver function tests have little incremental predictive value, although a small benefit may be present in men.

Maternal and paternal transmission of type 2 diabetes: influence of diet, lifestyle and adiposity

Transmission of family history of type 2 diabetes to the next generation is stronger for maternal than paternal diabetes in some populations. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether this difference is explained by diet, lifestyle factors and/or adiposity. We analysed 35174 participants from the Dutch contribution to the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, a prospective population-based cohort (aged 20-70 years) with a median follow-up of 10.2 years. Parental history of diabetes was self-reported. Occurrence of diabetes was mainly identified by self-report and verified by medical records. Amongst 35174 participants, 799 incident cases of diabetes were observed. In age- and sex-adjusted analyses, hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for diabetes by maternal and paternal diabetes were 2.66 (2.26-3.14) and 2.40 (1.91-3.02), respectively. Maternal transmission of risk of diabetes was explained by diet (9.4%), lifestyle factors including smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and educational level (7.8%) and by adiposity, i.e. body mass index and waist and hip circumference (23.5%). For paternal transmission, the corresponding values were 2.9%, 0.0% and 9.6%. After adjustment for diet, lifestyle factors and adiposity, the HRs for maternal (2.20; 95% CI, 1.87-2.60) and paternal (2.23; 95% CI, 1.77-2.80) transmission of diabetes were comparable. Both maternal and paternal diabetes are associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, independently of diet, lifestyle and adiposity. The slightly higher risk conferred by maternal compared to paternal diabetes was explained by a larger contribution of diet, lifestyle factors and adiposity.

‘Quota Refugees’: The Dutch Contribution to Global ‘Burden Sharing’ by Means of Resettlement of Refugees

The international refugee law regime that was created in the wake of the Second World War does not comprise distributive principles as a result of which geographical proximity functions as the primary distributive mechanism. Consequently, the distribution of refugees is unevenly shared among states, understandably giving rise to calls for burden sharing. Rather than states, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (hereafter: UNHCR) is charged with resettlement of refugees and it depends on the discretion of (too few) states to offer resettlement places. One of those states is the Netherlands, which has set an annual quota of 500 refugees (including their relatives) for resettlement. Dutch practice with respect to its ‘quota refugees’ appears to be illustrative of the current use of ‘resettlement’ as neither a form of burden sharing nor necessarily a durable solution for the problem of refugees. It invites to revisit the solution of ‘resettlement’ against the background of legal developments, state and UNHCR practice, using fuzzy logic as an analytical tool.

Gendered Subjective Theologies: Dutch Teenage Girls and Boys on the Role of Religion in their Life

In this article about the Dutch contribution to the REDCo1 sub-project on the role of gender, related to religion in/and school, the authors present the characteristics in the answers girls and boys, respectively gave to their questionnaires. Qualitative as well as quantitative methods were used in this research project. The research findings show that girls and boys in general position themselves in a similar way to religion. However, in girls’ subjective theologies the authors see, more than in boys’ theologies, an openness to the other religion. Girls more than boys tend to be more in favor of religion as a school subject, they want to know more about and from other religions, and are more positive about the possibilities to live peacefully together with people of different religions in the society. In this research population the authors find that boys are clearer in demarcating the boundaries of their subjective theologies. Societal gendered practices apparently mirror actual ideas on femininity and masculinity in different Western societies and apparently shape teenagers’ subjective theologies. The authors present a possible pedagogical strategy for classroom conversations, accounting for (gendered) diversity in subjective theologies. REDCo is the acronym for the European project on “Religion in Education, a contribution to Dialogue or a factor of conflict in transforming societies in European countries?”

Urbanization, Culture and the Dutch Origins of the European Enlightenment

The Dutch Republic currently plays a prominent role in the big debates on the origins and nature of the European Enlightenment. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to the role played by urbanization in this. This contribution focuses on the specific form of urbanization that took place in Holland, and a compelling relationship is established between urbanization in the coastal provinces and a series of political and religious issues that were of decisive importance in the early European Enlightenment. The high watermark of this Dutch contribution can be found in the period 1680-1730. After this, and closely related to the decrease in urbanization and the social problems associated with economic decline, the Dutch Enlightenment would acquire a character all of its own, unfamiliar to other Europeans. This article is part of the special issue 'The International Relevance of Dutch History'.

Coffee and tea consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes

The aim of this study was to examine the association of consumption of coffee and tea, separately and in total, with risk of type 2 diabetes and which factors mediate these relations. This research was conducted as part of the Dutch Contribution to the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, which involves a prospective cohort of 40,011 participants with a mean follow-up of 10 years. A validated food-frequency questionnaire was used to assess coffee and tea consumption and other lifestyle and dietary factors. The main outcome was verified incidence of type 2 diabetes. Blood pressure, caffeine, magnesium and potassium were examined as possible mediating factors. During follow-up, 918 incident cases of type 2 diabetes were documented. After adjustment for potential confounders, coffee and tea consumption were both inversely associated with type 2 diabetes, with hazard ratios of 0.77 (95% CI 0.63-0.95) for 4.1-6.0 cups of coffee per day (p for trend = 0.033) and 0.63 (95% CI: 0.47-0.86) for >5.0 cups of tea per day (p for trend = 0.002). Total daily consumption of at least three cups of coffee and/or tea reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes by approximately 42%. Adjusting for blood pressure, magnesium, potassium and caffeine did not attenuate the associations. Drinking coffee or tea is associated with a lowered risk of type 2 diabetes, which cannot be explained by magnesium, potassium, caffeine or blood pressure effects. Total consumption of at least three cups of coffee or tea per day may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes.

The Netherlands and the designation of marine protected areas in the North Sea&lt;br&gt; Implementing international and European law

There is general agreement that representative and ecologically coherent networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) should be created to maintain biodiversity and to conserve specific species, habitats and ecological processes. This article addresses the contribution that is made by the Netherlands to the North Sea MPA network. It reviews the applicable legal obligations with regard to the designation of MPAs contained in global and regional treaties and EU law, and provides a critical assessment of the actions that have thus far been taken by the Netherlands to implement these obligations. The article concludes that significant steps have been taken towards a solid Dutch contribution to the global and regional goals of representative MPA networks. There are, however, a number of shortcomings. To a large degree, these are the result of the policy of the Netherlands Government to go no further in the designation of MPAs than what is strictly required by the EU Birds and Habitats Directives. On account of the widely acknowledged ‘marine deficiencies’ of the Habitats Directive, this policy stands in the way of achieving the target of a representative MPA network. Moreover, it is rather doubtful whether the same minimalist approach is sufficient to meet the relevant obligations of the Netherlands under global and regional treaties, in particular the OSPAR Convention. These shortcomings can be remedied by the designation of additional MPAs and, in some cases, by extending the list of species and habitats for which current MPAs have been selected.

Methodological aspects of the Dutch National Threat Assessment

This paper discusses issues related to measuring organized crime as they have become manifest in the Dutch contribution to the EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA). It intends to convey to a wider academic community certain issues of definition, methodology and accountability, understanding the NTA process in terms of the communication of risks in a context of competitive defining institutions.