In de zondagse estafette-rubriek ‘Bericht uit…’ belichten columnisten uit de Caribische delen van het Koninkrijk bij toerbeurt de kanten van hun eiland waarvan zij vinden dat die de aandacht van alle koninkrijksburgers verdienen. Vandaag komt het bericht uit Sint Eustatius.
When Equal Laws Are Not Enough: Saba and Statia Seek Services That Match Island Realities
By Alfred Harley
When Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba became public bodies of the Netherlands in 2010, the transition carried an important promise, equal legal protection, comparable access to public services, and full participation within the Dutch constitutional framework. More than a decade later, residents of Saba and St. Eustatius continue to ask how that promise is experienced in daily life, especially when essential services and administrative decisions are often coordinated from outside their own islands.
A recent policy letter from Kingdom Relations State Secretary Eric van der Burg offered one of the more hopeful messages in years. It emphasized that public authorities in the Caribbean Netherlands must deliver concrete improvements in citizens’ daily lives, and that residents and entrepreneurs must be able to rely on a government that produces results. Together with the visit in April to the BES Islands by Minister Mirjam Sterk, responsible for Long-Term Care, Youth and Sport, this has raised expectations that renewed attention will be given to healthcare, economic development, and public service delivery across the BES islands.
For St. Eustatius, the issue is not whether every service can or should be duplicated locally. Small island populations, limited labour markets, and geographic realities make that impractical in some areas. The more important question is whether each island has enough local capacity, authority, and responsiveness to ensure that equal treatment is meaningful in practice.
The three BES islands share a Dutch constitutional and administrative framework, but that does not mean public services operate in the same way on each island. Laws and regulations are often BES-wide, while implementation depends heavily on local capacity, population size, infrastructure, and distance from decision-makers. What appears efficient from an administrative perspective can feel distant to residents who must depend on off-island systems for urgent or practical matters.
This is especially visible in healthcare. All residents of the Caribbean Netherlands are covered by the public healthcare insurance system, but the available care differs by island. Bonaire has broader hospital and specialist capacity, while Saba and St. Eustatius rely more heavily on local medical centres and off-island referrals for specialist treatment, advanced diagnostics, and some forms of emergency care.
Referral systems are therefore a central part of healthcare delivery for residents of the smaller islands. These systems can work well, especially with caregivers who strive for efficiency as is the case on St. Eustatius, but they also involve coordination, travel arrangements, destination capacity, medical assessment, and sometimes weather or transport limitations. For patients and families, the concern is not only whether care is formally available, but whether it can be accessed quickly, clearly, and with sufficient local support.
Emergency response raises similar questions. The three islands operate within a shared public safety framework, and 911 serves as the emergency number across the Caribbean Netherlands. Shared coordination can support consistency, but small islands also depend on local knowledge. In emergencies, familiarity with roads, terrain, neighbourhoods, and local conditions can matter. For Saba and St. Eustatius, strengthening local response capacity should therefore remain a priority alongside any regional or centralized system.
The same concern appears in economic administration. Entrepreneurs on St. Eustatius often operate in small markets with limited margins for delay. Licensing, registration, labour procedures, inspections, and other administrative requirements may be legally uniform or broadly comparable, but the practical burden can be heavier when direct access to decision-makers is limited. For small businesses, slow or unclear processes can affect investment, hiring, expansion, and confidence.
Taxation and cost structures further show how uniform governance can produce different outcomes. Some tax and customs rules apply across the Caribbean Netherlands, while others differ by island. For example, certain excise duties apply differently on Bonaire than on Saba and St. Eustatius, and vehicle-related costs may vary because of both tax rules and practical factors such as shipping routes, scale, and logistics. These differences may be legally justified, but they still shape daily economic reality.
This is why proportionality must be understood carefully. Planning services mainly by population size can overlook the fixed costs of governing very small islands. Saba and St. Eustatius may have fewer residents than Bonaire, but they still require reliable healthcare access, emergency response, business support, public safety, infrastructure, and regulatory services. Smaller populations do not remove the need for functioning government, and, in some cases, they make resilience more difficult and more expensive.
These concerns should not be framed as accusations of favouritism. Bonaire, Saba, and St. Eustatius each face their own challenges, and all three are part of the same Caribbean Netherlands system. The central issue is outcomes. Equality before the law does not always translate into equality in daily life when geography, scale, and administrative design are not sufficiently taken into account.
For residents of St. Eustatius, the goal is not to compete with Bonaire, or Saba for that matter, but to ensure that public services are designed for the realities of each island. That means stronger local decision-making where possible, clearer service standards, better communication, faster administrative processes, and sufficient on-island capacity to prevent unnecessary delays.
The promise made in 2010 remains important. But fulfilling it requires more than shared laws and formal rights. It requires public services that residents can actually access, businesses can rely on, and communities can trust, a sentiment that based on recent news from the Netherlands, seem to be shared by the powers that be.
The question now is whether the renewed attention from The Hague will lead to practical improvements that can be felt on the ground. If future investments are designed not only for the islands, but with and on the islands, the Caribbean Netherlands can move closer to its 10-10-10 promise of equal membership adapted to local realities and reflected not only in policy, but in everyday life.