The Fourth Division

In addition to the Civil Division, the Criminal Division and the Tax Division, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands has a Fourth Division.

The Fourth Division handles complaints against judicial officers and cases regarding the suspension and dismissal of judicial officers who are appointed for life. Only the Procurator General at the Supreme Court can bring such cases before the Supreme Court. Furthermore, the Fourth Division handles requests for the substitution of a Supreme Court justice. The Fourth Division consists of the President of the Supreme Court, three Vice Presidents, of the Civil Division, Criminal Division, and Tax Division, and a number of justices from those divisions. Judgments of the Fourth Division are published at www.rechtspraak.nl.

In 2025, the Fourth Division rendered judgment in eleven cases. One judgment concerned the processing of personal data by courts. Ten judgments dealt with requests to challenge members of the Supreme Court.

Processing of personal data by courts

The Procurator General can, ex officio or based on a complaint, bring a claim before the Supreme Court to conduct an inquiry into the way a court processes personal data in the context of carrying out their judicial duties. This is laid down in the Regulation on the supervision of the processing of personal data by the courts and the Procurator General’s Office at the Supreme Court. Claims filed on the basis of this Regulation are heard by the Fourth Division.

On 9 September 2025, the Procurator General brought a claim after a received complaint. The complaint concerned the processing of personal data in a news item, published on rechtspraak.nl by a district court, in the context of a criminal case. The complaint consisted of two parts. The first part concerned the accuracy of certain information in the news item. The second part complained that certain information in the news item could be traced back to the applicant and that applicant was put in a negative light.

The Supreme Court ruled that both parts of the complaint were well-founded (Supreme Court 19 December 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1980). The news item contained information that was in breach of the principle of accuracy laid down in Article 5 of the GDPR. The news item could be traced back to the applicant, and the content of the news item was such that serious consequences could be anticipated if applicant were recognised. It concerned information that could be stigmatising for the applicant, which is why publishing the specific data would have been permitted only if it were necessary on grounds of substantial public interest. The breach of the applicant’s privacy was not necessary in this case. To that extent, the news item could not rely on the legitimate basis provided by Article 6(1), opening words and (e), GDPR and was not in accordance with the principle of data minimisation and the principles of proportionality and subsidiarity.

Challenge cases

As a safeguard of judicial impartiality, the law confers the right to submit a challenge request. The party submitting the challenge request is requesting the replacement of a specific judge by another judge. All three areas of law in which the Supreme Court handles cases have procedural rules concerning challenge. The Protocol on Participation in the Handling and Deliberations of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands (links to a different website) provides additional rules for the handling of a challenge request pertaining to one of the members of the Supreme Court.

A judgment of 7 February 2025 (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:183) concerned a request for the challenge of a justice who, according to the application, had too many conflicting interests due to his ancillary positions. The Supreme Court denied the application because there was no bias against the applicant, or an objectively justifiable fear thereof.

A judgment of 28 March 2025 (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:478) concerned a request for the challenge of members of the Supreme Court based on circumstances from which the applicant concluded that those members had insufficient distance from the case to hear and assess the appeal in cassation, and that there was a premeditated intent to rule against the applicant. The circumstances mentioned by the applicant related to positions the challenged members had held in the (distant) past. The Supreme Court ruled that those circumstances did not justify the conclusion that those members were biased against the applicant, nor that there was an objectively justified fear of bias. A ruling to that effect is also contained in the judgment of 18 July 2025, (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1200). In this judgment, it was further ruled that the mere fact that a judge has ruled in a previous case regarding a party to the proceedings does not mean that this judge is biased against this party, or that the fear of such bias is objectively justified.

Two judgments of 12 December 2025 (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1903 and ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1906) concerned, among other things, challenge requests for a member of the Supreme Court, arguing that the ancillary activities of that member had not been published in the appropriate register. There was a technical problem at the basis of this issue, which had been remedied at the time of the judgment. The Supreme Court considered that a copy of the ancillary positions of the member in question as published was sent to the applicant with the advisory opinion of the Advocate General. She did not avail herself of the opportunity to respond to that. In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the circumstance that the ancillary positions had not been published in the appropriate register for a certain period of time did not by itself constitute compelling evidence that the member harboured a bias against the applicants, nor that there was an objectively justified fear of bias.

In five cases, the Supreme Court did not consider a challenge request substantively: