Emmen must be given much more priority in the new Spatial Planning Memorandum, the nitrogen problem must be solved and there must be more care for the elderly because Drenthe is aging. The province, all Drenthe municipalities and water boards communicated this and a handful of other major problems that need to be solved to informant Sybrand van Haersma Buma.
The fact that the 17 governments jointly send their points in one letter to a formateur of a new cabinet is new. Governments, companies and interest groups often send their own letters with wishes. An informant gets stacks of them. But the challenges and urgency of the shared problems are great, as is the call for a stable cabinet and clear choices. So one joint letter from Drenthe.
According to King’s Commissioner Jetta Klijnsma, the most important thing for all those authorities is that the Emmen region (Southeast Drenthe + Hoogeveen) is given a much higher priority in the Spatial Planning Policy. This memorandum describes what our country will look like in 20 years’ time.
Emmen is now given the lowest status: that of a regional center and industrial center that can be ‘strengthened’. According to the government, this strengthening applies to ‘areas with less extensive autonomous economic development and population growth, aimed at developing living and working, appropriate to the size and scale of the region, in line with regional demand.’
But according to the authorities, this status does not match the ambitions of the region. And it certainly does not fit in with the 2 billion euros that the government is allocating for the construction of the Lower Saxony line. All kinds of developments are planned around the new railway line, including 45,000 homes
Acceleration and support of housing construction is the next point in the letter. Particularly in the regions of Assen – Groningen, Emmen and Meppel – Zwolle to relieve pressure on the housing market.
Nitrogen reduction must be accelerated. So that housing construction, nature restoration and infrastructure projects do not come to a standstill. A ‘transformation’ is necessary in healthcare due to the increasingly aging population and therefore increasing demand for care and support.
The government is threatening new major cuts in regional public transport. The call is: reverse that and previous cuts. Klijnsma: “In the Randstad, you have a tram, metro or bus every 10 minutes. And here we have to fight to keep a bus once an hour in some places. And solve the bottleneck on the railway near Meppel and provide an intercity between Groningen, Assen and Zwolle every 15 minutes.”
The 17 governments also want a ‘future-proof approach to the asylum chain, with attention to decisiveness, reception and perspective.’ It is no secret that Klijnsma, on behalf of all provinces, insisted to successive cabinets that the dispersal law had to be introduced because a large number of municipalities refused to accommodate asylum seekers and/or did not provide adequate housing for status holders, causing Ter Apel to keep overflowing and northern municipalities having to provide emergency shelter.
And according to Klijnsma, the current cabinet is not making much progress in implementing that law.
The 17 governments are concerned about sufficient clean and fresh water. They want a guarantee that Drenthe will continue to receive sufficient water from the IJsselmeer, ‘essential for agriculture, nature and quality of life’, they write. In the summer, Drenthe is largely completely dependent on IJsselmeer water for agriculture and nature. Which, according to Klijnsma: “more and more other parts of our country also want to lay claim to it.”
Grid congestion on the electricity network is also mentioned again. Solving this is necessary for economic growth and the transition from fossil to sustainable energy.
The distribution of national cultural funding is skewed. In North Holland, 61 euros per inhabitant comes from the government’s culture budget, in Drenthe it is only 2 euros. Drenthe dangles at the bottom and receives 0.3 percent of the national total cultural funding. That distribution needs to change. And more money is needed for the renovation of the Camp Westerbork Remembrance Center.
Things will only really go well for the Netherlands if things are going well in every part of the country, the letter writers believe. They invite informant Buma to do the cabinet formation in Drenthe and to inspire the parties at the table with the Drenthe way of working together. ‘Our province offers peace, trust and connection that form the basis for sustainable results.’ It was signed: the king’s commissioner and all mayors and dike counts.