The National Prevention Agreement that was concluded in November 2018 is ineffective according to two health law professors, Brigit Toebes from the University of Groningen and Jos Dute from Radboud University. According to them, this is because the influence of the food and alcohol industry was too great during the negotiations. The Prevention Agreement consists of: a number of measures to promote the health of Dutch citizens by reducing smoking, obesity and excessive alcohol use. In particular, the measures regarding obesity and alcohol consumption do not go far enough for many. Just before that, the Council of State had in her mind annual report for 2018 already warned about social agreements such as the Prevention Agreement, the Climate Agreement and the Energy Agreement. According to the Council of State, the House of Representatives relinquishes its power by developing legislation on the basis of such agreements. This makes the influence of companies and social organizations too great, especially because these parties mainly represent their own interests and not the general interest. The responsibility for policy is thus taken away from politics, where it should lie, according to the Council of State in the same annual report.

Indeed, an agreement is increasingly being chosen to solve social problems. The government will work together with government, action groups, NGOs, scientists and the business community to look for possible solutions. The advantage of such a collaboration is that all relevant parties are involved and participate in the agreement. But there is also the Achilles heel. There is a risk that the implementation of such an agreement and the objectives contained therein will largely be placed in the hands of the business community or local government. However, the companies always have a commercial objective and do not always feel responsible for ultimately implementing the agreement, while local authorities often have insufficient resources to actually implement the agreement. A second problem may be that this approach often causes the proposed solutions to go less far than would be necessary from the general interest. In that context, setting up an alliance that works bottom-up, as opposed to an agreement, may be a better approach. In an alliance, all parties involved indicate what they can contribute to solving a social problem and actually commit to the solution. Politics then only needs to lay down in legislation those matters that cannot be resolved by the parties.

It is of course nice to shape solutions in good consultation in an agreement, but the balance has been somewhat lost recently. It may be wise to recalibrate the roles of all parties and no longer choose the instrument of an agreement as standard.