The Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament gave Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten less than one more month to handle the draft Kingdom Act establishing the Caribbean Entity for Reform and Development COHO, when they had asked for close to two. One ought to point out that approval by their three legislatures is not required for that of the Netherlands to pass the so-called consensus law.
The good part is that moving the deadline for a formal response from respectively Willemstad, Oranjestad and Philipsburg to May 13 means there will be time to discuss this matter with elected representatives from the Netherlands during the Inter-Parliamentary Kingdom Consultation IPKO, hosted by St. Maarten and set to conclude a week earlier. Reports from The Hague seem to indicate there is little room for any last-minute changes, however.
People need to realise that COHO is merely an instrument, and while the say local governments have in such remains important, the “country package” of restructuring measures it must supervise is what will affect the community in practice. Some of these, like almost doubling the annual wage limit for collective health and accident coverage by Social and Health Insurances SZV, are already in process.
Others yet to be decided on include a real estate tax for non-residents and a levy on individual (online shopping) imports. The socioeconomic impact of some plans is also not clear.
State Secretary for Kingdom Relations Alexandra van Huffelen in any case seems satisfied about progress made with St. Maarten’s Execution Agenda, calling it “mainly positive” and the current collaboration “constructive for the largest part” of the measures. An implementation strategy has been determined so the next phase can start.
It’s been said before but might be worth repeating: After its most devastating hurricane-hit ever in September 2017 and an unprecedented COVID-19 crisis during the past two years plus currently a war in Europe with all possible consequences, great care should be taken not to undermine the still-fragile recovery of the island’s tourism economy on which the livelihood of basically its entire population greatly depends.
