With the new massacres etched into our consciences by the retreating Russians, the question has become even more urgent: what should we do? What should we have done?
To the astonishment of the House of Representatives, Foreign Affairs Minister Wopke Hoekstra said on Thursday that the cabinet has done almost nothing so far, with the sanctions imposed on the responsible Russians and their supporters. No freezing of possessions, no yachts on a chain, no investigation into the oligarchs who channel their fortunes through the mailboxes of the Zuidas. Even the Land Registry had not yet received a request to map Russian real estate, it reported NOS News Tuesday.
Hoekstra, who in his time as a management consultant could limit himself to analyzes and advice, will appoint ‘a special coordinator’ on Monday to enforce the sanctions. Apparently this does not fall under the ministerial duties. This ‘heavyweight’ will therefore only start five weeks after the sanctions were announced. In fact, it is almost eight years since Russia annexed Crimea and the first sanctions were declared. Since then, as we wrote earlier in this newspaper, little has been done about enforcement. Apparently too much manpower was spent on supervising the benefit parents.
In Italy, a Fiod-like agency with 60,000 people is involved in sanctions enforcement, and nearly a billion in assets have already been frozen. The service was set up twenty years ago to track down terrorist financing and money launderers, Rosa van Gool wrote in an enlightening article on Saturday. In Italy they know their Pappenheimers.
The Netherlands ignores its Pappenheimers. For years we have facilitated the payment transactions of criminals, mala fide companies and other figures who have ‘earned’ their money in any way that is tax attractive. The Netherlands, the country that thinks most people with white collars are good, just let it happen. Sanctions? “The rapid development and unprecedented scope of the sanctions has shown that implementation and supervision can be improved,” Hoekstra wrote last week, without irony. The Sanctions Act has been in existence since 1977.
On Sunday, Rutte said he was ‘shocked’ about the terrible crimes committed by the Russians in Butja and other suburbs of Kyiv. ‘The Netherlands and its partners will not rest until the perpetrators are held accountable.’
But real measures and real sacrifices were again postponed by the cabinet on Sunday. These terrible crimes are still partly financed by the Netherlands, through the continuous purchase of Russian oil and gas. While Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stopped importing them this weekend, Rob Jetten, the Dutch Minister for Climate and Energy, said in a TV program Buitenhof that the Netherlands cannot do that because we can only do that ‘as a European bloc’. Nonsense. The Baltic States are also members of the EU.
On Saturday, the cabinet started a public campaign to make consumers use less gas. The thermostat has to be set to 19 and we have to take shorter showers. But the industry can continue to do what has always been done. ‘Turn the switch too’, is the slogan of the campaign. Time for the government to do the same.
The position of the newspaper is expressed in the Volkskrant Commentaar. It is created after a discussion between the commentators and the editor-in-chief.