Originally Posted by
WHBM
The bulk of airline certification authorities require a passenger to be seated in the exit row to operate the door immediately if required, along with all the specification of who can sit there or not.
This does not seem to be the case in the Netherlands, unfortunately - either that, or no one has drawn the authorities' attention to all those empty exit rows, especially on short Cityhopper flights (like NWI-AMS). Had a chat about this with one of the cabin crew once who confirmed it's now very common to have entire exit rows with no one in them.