After five months and ten days of negotiations, Brabant will have a completely different provincial government than many people would have thought after the elections. The Boer Burger Movement (BBB) won a huge victory with eleven seats, but is entering the opposition. Their supporters will look tense at the coalition agreement, thinks political reporter Tessel Linders. “D66, among others, takes the place of BBB. You can’t get a bigger difference on nitrogen and nature.”
After BBB won the election, the party entered the negotiations with an open mind. An agreement seemed to be reached in June with the VVD, GroenLinks and the PvdA. Only the supporters of the BBB could not support that, so the party made all kinds of extra demands, which eventually caused the negotiations to collapse.
The remaining parties have continued to talk with D66, the SP and Local Brabant to achieve a majority in the Provincial Council. The six parties together have 28 of the 55 seats.
Although nothing is known about the content of the collapsed and the current coalition agreement, you can assume that the BBB voter will not be enthusiastic about the new provincial government. “Especially when you talk about nature and nitrogen, you can’t have a bigger difference than between the BBB and D66,” Linders explains. It is precisely these subjects that have become very important in Brabant in recent years.
“Agreements with the BBB will now be off the table to satisfy D66.”
“Agreements made with the BBB, where other parties had to compromise, will now be off the table to satisfy D66.” According to Linders, this was necessary to get the party involved and thus gain a majority.
In order to get the SP into the coalition, the VVD will have to make compromises, the reporter thinks. “During the campaign, the socialists put a lot of effort into labor migration. We have a lot of labor migrants in Brabant and the SP wants us to arrange that better. There will be a tough fight about that.”
“Three quarters of the people of Brabant will be somewhat satisfied.”
She thinks that the farmers who voted en masse for the BBB will not be very happy with what is in the agreement. “Although we don’t know anything for sure yet, of course. But three-quarters of the people of Brabant have not voted for the BBB and will be somewhat satisfied with this agreement.”
Everything will become a lot clearer on September 1 when the new provincial government presents itself and also announces all plans for the next four years.
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