Periodic evaluation of policy effectiveness is recommended. MIN V&W (1990) prescribes a 5-year interval for evaluation. Since 1990, several evaluations, of single nourishment events (ROELSE and HILLEN, 1993) and the coastline policy as a whole (cf. ROELSE, 1996, 2002; DE RUIG, 1998), have been presented. Considering the operational objective to preserve the coastline at its 1990 position, a quantitative evaluation leads to a clear conclusion: "Dynamic Preservation" has been successful over the period of 1991 - 2000. With a yearly average of 6 million m 3 of sand nourishments over the last decade, ROELSE (2002) states that there is no more coastal retreat and the number of transects exceeding the BCL is decreasing yearly.
With respect to the strategic objectives, viz. to guarantee a sustainable safety level and sustainable preservation of values and functions in the dune area, the lacking of explicit guidelines for benchmarking of effectiveness hampers an objective evaluation. However, evaluations of developments in safety levels and in values and functions of the dune area show positive indications. To a lesser extent, the same accounts for sustainability.
