“I don’t think it’s about months, but about weeks,” Hermans says in the NOS radio debate about the municipal elections. The VVD member says that her party wants to dampen the ‘effects’ that the war in Ukraine has on the energy bill. “You have to work carefully,” says Hermans. “It’s too easy here to pretend it’s taken care of overnight. But that doesn’t mean working for a long time.”
D66 party leader Paternotte also points out that the energy problem may have been an issue for some time, but the situation has recently changed even more. “It has only been eight days since the first bombs were dropped on Ukraine.”
‘Billions on the table’
That there would be a quarrel between coalition parties after CDA leader Hoekstra said in De Telegraaf that the parties should ‘go back to the drawing board’, but that according to D66 leader Kaag ‘is not the intention’, is not so bad as far as Paternotte is concerned. According to him, everyone agrees that something needs to be done about energy costs, but that is not something that can be easily arranged. “We should not pretend there is a difference of opinion if there are not billions on the table within eight days.”
Paternotte also points to the more than 3 billion euros that the cabinet already set aside last year to cushion the bill that is rising from the pan. “The problem is that far too little has been done,” says SP leader Marijnissen. “A lot of people can no longer pay the bills.” Paternotte sees that too: “More money will be needed.”