BES islands to benefit from internship compensation bill

Students completing internships in Curacao, Aruba and St. Maarten will not be covered by a draft legislation that would grant students the right to receive compensa­tion for mandatory intern­ships. The proposed law announced by the Dutch government, will apply only in the European- and Ca­ribbean Netherlands.

The public entities of Bo­naire, St. Eustatius and Saba (so-called BES is­lands) thus stand to ben­efit, but not the autono­mous Caribbean countries within the Dutch Kingdom of Curacao, Aruba and St. Maarten.

The bill aims to ensure that students enroled in second­ary vocational education, MBO, higher professional education, HBO and scien­tific education WO univer­sities receive compensation for mandatory internships or internships that form part of their educational programme. Under the proposal, no nationwide minimum internship allow­ance will be established. Instead, the amount would be determined through sector-specific or company-level agreements.

Because Dutch education does not extend to Curacao, Aruba and St. Maarten, the proposed legal right to internship compensation would have no direct effect there. This also means that students from the Nether­lands who complete intern­ships on those three islands would not be able to claim the proposed statutory right to compensation.

Interns and host organisations in Curacao, Aruba and St. Maarten would still be free to negotiate intern­ship allowances on their own. However, according to the Dutch Ministry of Education, whether such agreements are legally en­forceable depends on the law governing the intern­ship contract.

The proposed legislation is expected to be released for public Internet consul­tation before the summer of next year, after which it will continue through the Dutch legislative process before being considered by Parliament. If adopted, the law would mark a sig­nificant change for students in the Netherlands and the BES islands, while leaving internship compensation in Curacao, Aruba and St. Maarten subject to existing contractual arrangements rather than a statutory en­titlement.

The Daily Herald.