Cargo from MSC Zoe revealed after pressure from legal expert Esther Kentin
After hundreds of containers fell into the Wadden Sea in 2019, government authorities refused to reveal the contents of that cargo. Five years on, after Esther Kentin filed a request for publication under the Open Government Act, we know more.
The government had previously refused to provide details about the cargo of container ship MSC Zoe 342, claiming it was company-sensitive information. However, Esther Kentin, a lecturer at Leiden Law School, claimed that the cargo was also environmental information and filed a request under the Open Government Act to recover the full list of contents. She argued that lost cargo constituted environmental waste and that information on this therefore had to be made public.
Likely waste sites already made public
Earlier this year, the government already made public the sites where there might be junk from this disaster. Time and again they withheld this information by invoking the Open Government Act. Read more about this in the Leiden Law Blog (in Dutch). Esther Kentin then also filed a request under the Open Government Act. Together with the Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic (headed by Esther), she conducted legal research into the disaster. Taking a firm stance, the project eventually got the government to release the information about likely waste sites. See also the earlier article on this.
Find out more?
For more information, read the full article on Dutch news site Omrop Fryslân.