Introduction
How to deal with the foreign funding of communities based on religion or belief when this funding comes from so called illiberal and unfree countries? How to reconcile public health measures concerning covid-19 and fundamental rights? And how to strengthen the national democracy based on the rule of law and the balance between state powers in the light of internal and external threats as well as of approved deficiencies? These and many other issues do raise fundamental questions about the constitutionality of (non)-intervention from the executive and/or the legislator, actors that are partly the same in the Netherlands.[132] In most cases it is the government who is primarily responsible and best equipped for addressing these issues in first instance, including the compatibility review, assisted by many internal and external advisory bodies, councils or agencies.
For many different reasons—political, legal, economic or otherwise—there is a need for additional scientific research or external constitutional advice on a regular basis. Special ad hoc commissions or committees will then be established or international bodies will be requested to give advice. Recent political crises and judicial decisions do make an old research question actual as it has not been for a long time. This question is: does all this constitutional advice finally make sense, and if not, why continuing or what can be done better? This question cannot be totally addressed in one chapter. For doing so, at least a meta-evaluation of the evaluations of the functioning of most constitutional advisors—when apparent— would be required. Instead, I will present an overview and categorization of different kinds and ways of constitutional advice, present considerations of the government and parliament in seeking for advice and finally will make some observations about effectiveness. In order to do so, I will first make clear the emerging attention of constitutional advice (Sect. 4.2) and then deal with the object and rationale of constitutional advice and define advice in relation to constitutional review (ex post and ex ante) (Sect. 4.3). Subsequently I will elaborate on the national and international actors (who?) (Sects. 4.4 and 4.5) and then focus on two concrete topics in order to illustrate the functioning and practical use of the procedural mechanisms on constitutional advice mentioned before (constitutional advice regarding undesirable foreign funding of organisations and, second, rule of law) (Sect. 4.6). Next to this I will look to the impact of advice (Sect. 4.7) and finally I will end with a conclusion (Sect. 4.8).4.2