The confession of 20 May 2019: ethnic profiling in black and white

Summary

Much has been written about ethnic profiling at the Belastingdienst, but the sharpest piece of evidence has remained nearly untouched: an internal memo of 20 May 2019, now public through the Childcare Allowance Information Point, in which the Directorate of Enforcement Policy spells out the existence of the nationality indicator for minister Eric Wiebes and state secretary Menno Snel. Not in cautious wording, not as a suspicion, but as a policy fact with a history.

The memo

The occasion sits in the header: articles by RTL Nieuws and Trouw, and oral questions by member of parliament Manon Leijten (SP). The memo — “for discussion 21 May 2019, 1 pm” — contains fact sheets, questions and answers, and the line Snel could follow the next day in question time. The three key passages:

To determine whether someone is entitled to allowances, Dutch nationality can be relevant.

Cases of suspected organised fraud are based on concrete fraud signals and not on nationality.

In the risk selection of housing allowance and childcare allowance, nationality was indeed used as one of the dozens of indicators for individual allowance applications and in supervision of individual entitlement holders.

Read the third passage again. “Indeed used”. “Dozens of indicators”. “Individual applications and supervision”. The Belastingdienst here describes its own selection mechanism in which the applicant’s nationality counted — at application, and again in supervision. The memo continues with the fine print: the added value “has decreased over the years”, the use was “temporarily stopped” pending the legal and social debate, the WRR and the National Ombudsman are studying it, and second nationality has been out of the BRP since April 2014.

Every sentence there is a confession in miniature. “Temporarily stopped” means: it was on, someone switched it off. “Decreased added value” means: for years it worked as a signal. And the BRP note shows they knew the data floor was shifting.

What the memo connects

The date is what makes the document heavy. 20 May 2019 is seven months before “Ongekende onrechtvaardigheid” by the Van Rijkevorsel committee, six months before the cabinet fell. The debate on ethnic profiling is already running in the memo itself: WRR, ombudsman, media, parliament. What the parliamentary inquiry would phrase months later as a conclusion stood on paper on 20 May 2019 at the very unit doing it.

The memo also clicks into the older layers of the file. The sweep operation found RAM extracts selected on nationality. The parliamentary letter on RAM counted 14 spreadsheets with nationality selection. The 2013 Bulgarian fraud series showed the trigger memo. The risk selection slides and treatment frameworks from the same archive display the mechanism. The 20 May 2019 memo is the link connecting all those layers to the present: here the organisation itself acknowledges that selection by nationality took place, and that only the use was halted — the system around it remained.

The aftermath, seven months later

When “Ongekend onrecht” appeared and the cabinet fell, this memo was seven months old. In public debate, ethnic profiling was treated as an allegation that needed proving. The proof lay in the organisation’s own archives, minuted for its own officeholders. That is the significance of this document for further research: it shifts the burden. No longer whether selection by nationality happened — that was settled at the directorate itself — but who knew, when, and why the use stopped only when the pressure came.

Frequently asked questions

What did the Belastingdienst admit on 20 May 2019?

In an internal memo to minister Wiebes and state secretary Snel, the Directorate of Enforcement Policy acknowledged that nationality was an indicator in housing and childcare allowance risk selection.

Why does the date 20 May 2019 matter?

The memo appeared seven months before the Ongekend onrecht report and half a year before the cabinet fell: the organisation knew and wrote it down itself.

Who asked the questions leading to the memo?

Member of parliament Manon Leijten (SP) tabled oral questions after articles by RTL Nieuws and Trouw on ethnic profiling.

What does temporarily stopped mean in the memo?

That the nationality indicator was actively in use and only switched off pending the legal and social debate; the system around it remained.

References

1. Memo ‘Oral questions Leijten (SP) on ethnic profiling at Benefits’, 20 May 2019 — witness file Menno Snel, Childcare Allowance Information Point
2. Open Brief: The archive nobody read — 6,600 documents and the confession of 20 May 2019
3. Open Brief: EOS is dead, long live ITE — the operational arm of Belastingdienst profiling
4. Open Brief: The Ombudsman register — 903 documents pried open

Investigation based on public sources. Corrections and additions are welcome via the contact page.