330 million for northern business and education for energy transition and green economy

Earlier there was a lot of grumbling in the northern ranks about the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Just Transition Fund (JTF). The North would receive much less from the ERDF fund in particular. ERDF is intended to reduce economic disparities between regions. There are also major economic differences between regions in our country. In the province of Noord-Holland, for example, more is earned per inhabitant than the European average. But in the provinces of Friesland and Drenthe, the inhabitants earn less than the European average. Drenthe and Friesland, together with Flevoland, have been designated as transition regions by the European Commission. This means that these provinces receive more money from Europe or that different conditions apply to money from Europe.

European heads of government decided to cut rich member states from their total ERDF budget. This means that Member States, where the per capita income is higher than 120 percent of the European average, will receive a hefty discount. In the Netherlands, the relatively wealthy provinces are responsible for the fact that the Netherlands is far above the European average. Drenthe and Friesland threatened to become the victims of the discount, but that was eventually ironed out politically.

When distributing the JTF money, the North still ran into the cabinet, because the central government determines which regions in the Netherlands are designated as JTF regions. The North, led by Groningen, wanted most of the Dutch JTF money (623 million euros) to go to our region. Ultimately that became 330 million, more than 53 percent of the total budget.

The JTF fund aims to prevent injustices or inequalities in the energy transition, or to prevent certain regions in the EU from being hit extra hard. It is mainly intended for countries such as Poland, where a lot of coal is still used as an energy source. Going off coal, just like with us, could lead to high unemployment if companies fail to make the switch to sustainable energy production and use. That is why the North thought that a significant part of the Dutch JTF money should flow to the North. Emmen was not one of them at first, but Brink has talked himself out of it in The Hague and Brussels. Everyone thought: he will never succeed, but he did it.