A total of 67 people were prosecuted last year for threatening MPs and cabinet ministers, nearly double the number in 2022.

The specialist police team dealing with threats towards politicians received 750 complaints in 2023, while the prosecution service said the law had been broken in 600 cases.

The increase in cases coming to court was partly due to the fact that relatively more threats came from the Netherlands rather than abroad, making it easier to identify and prosecute the culprits.

Many threats are made via social media platforms that are reluctant to share information with police, while around 400 were anonymous or came from countries that have no mutual co-operation agreements with the Netherlands.

The overall number of complaints was down from the record total of 1,100 in 2022, when Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV, filed a high number of police complaints. The prosecution service said the number of politicians who received threats was in line with previous years.

On Friday six people are due to appear in court at a special hearing in The Hague charged with threatening a number of politicians including former MPs Sjoerd Sjoerdsma of D66 and Kauthar Bouchallikht of GroenLinks, as well as former ministers Hugo de Jonge and Dilan Yesilgöz.