The Amsterdam judge, Mieke Dudok van Heel, was visibly concerned about it on Tuesday afternoon. There is war in Ukraine, she said, and European countries are more united than ever. But in the young Volt party, active throughout Europe, “a battle is also raging”. “And I’m afraid there will only be losers.”
Member of Parliament Nilüfer Gündogan demanded compensation from party chairman Laurens Dassen in summary proceedings, and she wants rectification of Volt because, according to her lawyer, she was “unlawfully” suspended as a member of the group, and was then wrongly expelled from the party.
In court, she first gave her side of the story through her attorney about her reports of transgressive behavior against people within Volt. According to Gundogan, it all started with a close associate with whom she was still friends in the 2020 election campaign, but who in the faction, she felt, was functioning poorly. She hadn’t wanted to renew his contract.
There would also have been at least four people in Volt who wanted her gone. Lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops, who repeatedly emphasized that Gündogan had obtained 41,352 votes in the elections, summed up: “One could not compete with her, one wanted to take over her position, one wanted to go to the European Parliament and did not want competition, one could not against the criticism my client had of her.”
Gundogan herself said that she was permanently damaged by the complaints. “There will always be people who think: where there is smoke, there is fire. But the only fire is my temperament and my drive.”
After her suspension, on Sunday evening, February 13, she was not allowed to know about the reports for five days. “That was hell,” she said, and wept. “I told Laurens: this is psychological torture.”
How the inexperienced Volt lost his number two
A large part of the session revolved around that suspension, and what exactly it was based on. According to Gundogan’s lawyer, there was nothing in Volt’s bylaws that regulated such a thing. According to Volt, it had been a decision of the party board, after at least three reports that had been received by the research agency Bing, hired by Volt. There are now thirteen, including about “possible abuse of power”, “tapping in the buttocks” and “comments about appearance” that were not liked. There was also “problematic alcohol use,” Volt said.
Peace
The judge kept coming back to the suspension: until that moment Gündogan did not know that such an investigation was underway against her, couldn’t it have been done differently? No, said Volt’s lawyers, as well as Dassen himself, to ensure the “safety” of the employees. They had wanted to conduct the investigation “in peace” and “with due regard for everyone’s interests.” The judge seemed unconvinced of this: “It was Volt himself who brought this out on February 13, wasn’t it?” There was no peace after that.
Volt’s lawyer said talks had been going on with Gundogan well before the first reports because she was sometimes “abusive and inappropriate.” And that after the suspension she had done nothing to work it out together. She declined to cooperate with Bing’s investigation and said in an email a few days after the suspension that she would be telling the media her story: over the weekend in de Volkskrant and with Buitenhofthen at Jinek†
‘Well said’
She didn’t, but Volt said that email showed what she was up to. Gundogan himself, meanwhile, had Bing investigated. She didn’t trust that agency, her lawyer said. She has now filed a complaint with the ‘Inspectie Integrity’ in the House of Representatives about the way she was treated by Volt. According to her lawyer, it would have been much more logical if Volt had also opted for such an investigation by the House of Representatives, and not for an external agency. The judge asked the Volt lawyer about it, but he said that such an investigation could have turned out much worse for Gundogan: “She could have been suspended as a Member of Parliament.”
For almost a year Laurens Dassen and Nilüfer Gündogan had sat side by side in the benches of the House of Representatives. Now it was the court, with four lawyers between them. Dassen said at the end of the session that he was ashamed because people in his party had not felt safe. “I think that too little attention is paid to that.”
The judge thought it was “nicely said”. And: “I don’t think anyone wanted it that way.”
The verdict is on March 9.
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