In the Netherlands, the possibilities for taking action against a member of parliament who is spying are limited, according to Jansen's research. 'New Members of Parliament swear allegiance to the Constitution when they are sworn in, but they are not screened by the AIVD and MIVD beforehand. In certain cases, a party leader may ask whether someone in their own party appears in the services' systems, and it sometimes happens that the AIVD warns a politician that he or she is being approached by dubious foreign parties."
One-month suspension
However, if the secret services conclude that a Member of Parliament has close ties with an enemy foreign regime, this does not immediately have parliamentary consequences. Jansen: "Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have a code of conduct. Passing on information to foreign countries is a violation of the code of conduct, with three possible sanctions: a warning, a reprimand or a suspension. Suspension is the most severe sanction, but it has a maximum duration of one month, and during that period, a member of parliament is not even excluded from voting."
However, criminal proceedings are possible. Leaking state secrets was already a criminal offence. Since July 2025, sharing sensitive information with a foreign power has also been explicitly criminalised in Article 98d of the Criminal Code. “In practice, however, prosecution is very complex, especially when it comes to offences committed in the course of official duties. In such cases, the matter must be dealt with by the Supreme Court through a special procedure. It is a complicated process in which other politicians decide whether a fellow politician should be prosecuted. In practice, this procedure is therefore a mission impossible.” Moreover, Jansen warns that there is no real possibility of removing spying politicians from office, either through political or criminal channels.
Unseemly relations with dubious regimes
Several (neighbouring) countries have already had to deal with parliamentarians who have come under fire for unsavoury relations with another regime. A Belgian member of parliament from Vlaams Belang turned out to be an informant for the Chinese secret service, and Czech intelligence sources claimed in 2023 that politicians from Germany, France, Hungary and the Netherlands, among others, were receiving money from Moscow. Recently, an assistant to the AfD group chairman in the European Parliament was sentenced to five years in prison for spying for the Chinese secret service.
Jansen advocates expanding existing measures, but warns against taking hasty steps. “We must prevent new sanctions from themselves posing a risk to democracy, creating the impression that all politicians can no longer be trusted. After all, autocrats are all too adept at using legal means against their opponents. New, robust instruments based on the rule of law are needed – and they must be better designed than what is currently possible.”