Bonaire's politics: inside the Netherlands without a province

What the record means by a dependency

The catalogue's record lists Bonaire as a dependency with the Netherlands as its sovereign, and that is the word the site uses for any territory that is not itself a sovereign state. In Dutch law the description is narrower. The three islands are openbare lichamen, public bodies, under article 134 of the constitution, and they form part of the country of the Netherlands itself. They are often called special municipalities, and the Dutch government compares them to the municipalities of the European Netherlands, with one difference it names: they are not part of any province.

That puts them on a different footing from the other Caribbean islands of the Kingdom. Since the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved on 10 October 2010, the Kingdom of the Netherlands has had four countries: the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are autonomous and govern themselves. Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba are not autonomous in that sense. Their island councils make local regulations, while their laws are made in The Hague and their island governments run what a Dutch municipality would run.

Statistics Netherlands notes that population size played a part in this division in 2010. The three islands with the most people became countries; the three with the fewest became part of the Netherlands.

How island councils and The Hague share power

Each island has an elected island council, which the Dutch government describes as the representative assembly of the people; the European External Action Service gives four-year terms for Saba's. It scrutinises an executive council, which runs day-to-day government, implements the council's decisions and takes decisions of its own, such as building permits and contracts. An island governor, appointed by the Crown, heads the executive council, and an island secretary heads the civil service. Bonaire's island council has nine members; those of Sint Eustatius and Saba have five each. The Act on the public bodies of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, known as the WolBES, sets out this structure and is modelled on Dutch municipal law.

The tasks a province would carry in the European Netherlands are split between the islands and central government. The National Office for the Caribbean Netherlands, the Rijksdienst Caribisch Nederland, set up in 2008 as a regional service centre and given its present name on 1 September 2010, delivers central government services on the islands: taxation, policing, immigration, transport infrastructure, health, education and social security. A Kingdom Representative, whose office is on Bonaire, links The Hague to the three public bodies, keeps the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations informed and performs tasks similar to those of a provincial King's Commissioner. The government of Sint Eustatius describes how the pieces fit: each Dutch ministry stays responsible for its own policy on the islands, while the National Office supplies the shared services that make it work there, from housing and ICT to staff and training. Not every ministry is represented on the islands directly; Foreign Affairs and Defence are the examples it gives.

Dutch law did not arrive all at once. The law of the Netherlands Antilles stayed in force after 10 October 2010 except where it was replaced, and Dutch legislation has been introduced in stages, often in a separate Caribbean Netherlands version. Social security is one area where the islands' version differs, and the gap became the subject of parliamentary decisions in 2023 and of a court case in 2026, both covered below. Tax is another: the islands have their own regime, with a profit tax rate of 0% in the Chamber of Commerce's summary.

How the islands vote for The Hague and Brussels

Dutch citizens on the three islands vote in elections to the House of Representatives, and they did so for the first time in the general election of 2012. As Dutch nationals they are also European Union citizens and vote in elections to the European Parliament, though the islands themselves are outside the Union.

The Senate is harder. In the European Netherlands it is elected by the members of the twelve provincial councils, and the islands belong to no province, so for years their residents had no say in its make-up. The answer was electoral colleges. Voters on each island elect a college with as many seats as the island council, nine on Bonaire and five each on Sint Eustatius and Saba, and those colleges vote alongside the provincial councils when the Senate is chosen. The electoral council lists the next election of the colleges for 17 March 2027. Each island is its own electoral district, and the island governor chairs its central polling committee.

Why the islands are outside the European Union

The Kingdom of the Netherlands is a member of the European Union, but its Caribbean parts are not in it. All six islands are overseas countries and territories, among the thirteen the European External Action Service listed as associated with the Union in 2021, so European law does not apply to them automatically. Every Dutch national, wherever in the Kingdom they live, is still a citizen of the Union.

When the Antilles were dissolved, the Kingdom's Council of Ministers agreed to leave the islands' European status untouched for five years. The Netherlands had already secured a provision in the Treaty of Lisbon that lets the European Council change the status of a Danish, French or Dutch overseas territory without amending the treaties, which would allow Bonaire, Sint Eustatius or Saba to become an outermost region, a part of the Union proper. A Dutch government survey of the legal and economic effects of such a change was published in June 2008. The review of the WolBES in October 2015 found that the arrangements for governing the islands and integrating them with the European Netherlands were not working well, but made no recommendation on whether a change of European status would help, and the islands remained overseas territories as of 2022.

Why The Hague took over Sint Eustatius

The public body arrangement gives the Dutch government powers over the islands that it does not have over Aruba or Curaçao, and in February 2018 it used them. It replaced the island council, the executive council and the governor of Sint Eustatius with a government commissioner, because in its words those bodies were not performing their tasks effectively. The St Eustatius Administrative Provisions (Restoration) Act laid down the arrangement.

The Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy, which has worked on the island since 2021, records that the move drew mixed reactions: some islanders supported it as a necessary step, others called it a serious infringement of local autonomy and democratic self-government. The BES Reporter wrote in 2020 that the Netherlands had intervened because the island's administration had turned away from the legal order.

The return was staged. A new island council was elected on 21 October 2020, with more than 2,000 residents eligible to vote for five seats and the government commissioner keeping a veto. From October 2022 the council could appoint the members of the executive council again, and from 2023 it controlled its own budget and organisation. A governor was appointed on 10 April 2024, and on 1 September 2024 the Restoration Act ceased to apply.

How Bonaire has voted on its own status

Bonaire has been asked about its status more often than the other two islands. In the referendum cycle that followed Sint Maarten's vote for country status in 2000, Bonaire and Saba voted for closer ties with the Netherlands and Sint Eustatius voted to keep the Antilles. A referendum on the final arrangement, held on 17 December 2010, gave 84% in favour on a turnout of 35%, below the 51% threshold, and was declared invalid.

In 2013 the group Nos Ke Boneiru Bèk presented more than 3,500 signatures asking for a new vote under the right of self-determination. The Dutch minister responsible replied that only the island councils could call a constitutional referendum, and that a change in the constitutional relationship was not part of the evaluation planned for 2015. A referendum was held all the same, and on 18 December 2015, 65.55% of those voting said they did not agree with the direct link to the Netherlands. The vote was not binding, and the status stands.

Opinion on the island is not simply for or against the Netherlands. The historian Anne van Mourik, citing the political scientist Wouter Veenendaal and the historian Gert Oostindie, writes that most Bonaireans are not preoccupied with independence and that the island's interests are too bound up with the Netherlands to cut ties. What has drawn protest, including on the streets in May 2022, is poverty and the gap between the islands' benefits and those of the European Netherlands.

What the courts and parliament said about equal treatment

Two decisions in three years addressed that gap directly. In October 2023 a large majority of the House of Representatives voted to introduce a social minimum on the three islands from 1 July 2024, after a commission found that the minimum wage and benefits there fell far short of the cost of living. Bonaire: economy covers what changed.

On 28 January 2026 the District Court of The Hague ruled in a case brought in 2024 by eight residents of Bonaire with Greenpeace Netherlands. It found that the state had failed in its obligations under articles 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the second of them the ban on discrimination, because it had treated Bonaire's inhabitants differently from those of the European Netherlands in preparing for climate change although Bonaire faces greater risk sooner. It rejected the claim under article 2, the right to life. The court ordered binding economy-wide emission targets in law within eighteen months and a national adaptation plan that takes Bonaire into account by 2030. The parties had three months to appeal, and the judgment was declared provisionally enforceable.

Who speaks for the islands abroad

Foreign relations, defence and nationality are matters for the Kingdom. The islands must involve the Dutch foreign minister before making any agreement with a country in the region, and they are represented in the Kingdom government by the Netherlands. The armed forces in the Caribbean, including a navy guardship on rotation, are Kingdom forces, and the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard is funded by all four countries of the Kingdom and directed by the commander of the Royal Netherlands Navy in the Caribbean.

The courts are shared. All six islands use the Joint Court of Justice of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba as their court of appeal, and above it the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in The Hague. The prison for the three islands, the Judicial Institution Caribbean Netherlands in Kralendijk, has been run since 10 October 2010 by the Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency and has had room for 76 men, women and juveniles since 6 December 2010.