AMSTERDAM — Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima are investigating whether legal action can be taken against gossip magazines in the Netherlands and Germany after they published articles suggesting the royal couple was having marital problems.
 
The gossip magazines honed in on the royal couple after the Olympic Games in Athens, where a photo was taken of Prince Willem-Alexander and star Dutch swimmer Inge de Bruijn arm-in-arm in the Holland Heineken House.

The prince attended a function at the venue on invitation and several gossip magazines later ran stories suggesting there was more to the hug than met the eye. They also suggested that there was a strained atmosphere in the Wassenaar mansion of Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima.

A spokesman for the government information service RVD dismissed the suggestion as nonsense, news agency ANP reported on Saturday.

And the prince and princess are reportedly so angry that they are investigating what legal action can be taken against the magazines, two of which come from the Netherlands and two of which come from Germany. There is national and international case law that might assist the royal couple’s battle.

The European Court of European Rights has previously ruled that the privacy of Monaco’s Princess Caroline had been violated. The ruling was against a German magazine which published photos of the princess’ private life without her permission.

Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima are regularly locked in legal disputes with media in regards their privacy. The last such case involved the publication of photos of their baby daughter Princess Amalia, which were taken from Maxima’s stolen digital camera.

The popular royal couple has also crossed hairs with the nation’s media by obtaining a Wassenaar Council ban on photographs being made of them through the fence of their mansion De Eikenhorst. The ban was eventually overturned.

Despite this, Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima won a legal case at the end of February against gossip magazine Prive, which had published photos of the inside of the royal couple’s mansion without their permission.

[Copyright Expatica News 2004]

Subject: Dutch news