Soft and determined Eelco Heinen shakes his head. According to the Minister of Finance and VVD member, the journalist who asked for the ‘Eurobonds’ with which the European Union will pay extra defense has not understood it. “These are not Eurobonds.”
It is Monday afternoon and Heinen is on the red carpet of the Brussels meeting room, where he and his European colleagues talk about money and the defense plans of the continent. He keeps saying: these are not Eurobonds. He said it a few minutes before.
The sheaf cabinet is in a complicated parquet. In the Lower House, a hefty headwind has been raised against the European Commission’s REEMPOLENTAGENDA. Right -wing parties in particular feel little for the proposals that promise Brussels flexibility: countries may let their budget deficits rise in the coming years if the money goes to the Ministry of Defense.
The committee’s plan to borrow money on the capital market, up to 150 billion euros, is already encountered as much resistance from conservative groups. They believe that countries with a less neat budget never improve their lives as long as they can benefit from a European credit status thanks to the Netherlands. And they fear having to pay the bill in the worst case.
A majority of the House of Representatives, including three of the four coalition parties, voted in The Hague on Tuesday afternoon for a motion by MP Joost Eerdmans (Ja21). That motion evokes: do not participate in this Rears Encouragement Plan. Last week the voices stopped because Eerdmans was in a traffic jam. On Tuesday, PVV, NSC and BBB voted against the VVD.
But in Brussels, Prime Minister Dick Schoofed in last week with the first contours of the Rearmission Plan. The European Commission is now elaborating the plans. Does the government still have opportunities to get the coalition back on board, and at the same time stay at the table in Brussels, where the eyebrows are frowned about the Dutch attitude? See the difficult task for which Eelco Heinen stands for.
Political dynamite
Part of that strategy is in any case this: putting things into perspective, nuance. That is why Heinen does not use the term Eurobonds in Brussels, that is political dynamite. You can’t call it “joint loans”, the minister corrects the journalists a little later. It concerns individual loans through countries from a pot from the European Commission.
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Are it now Eurobonds or not, with which the European Commission wants to finance the defense plans? And was the VVD not against that?
Okay, Heinen, the Dutch taxpayer, ultimately guarantees, even though the buffers from the existing European budget are the collateral in the first instance. But: loans have already been issued in this way, he says. That’s right – although it almost always happened on a much smaller scale than is now presented.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is superlatives to praise its REACHNATION PLAN, ‘REARM Europe’. “This is a moment for Europe to get up,” she said at the announcement last week. The cabinet opts for an opposite message through Prime Minister Schoof and Minister Heinen: walk further, nothing to see here.
In the meantime, the Netherlands is the biggest crossbar behind the scenes. That attitude is striking. Diplomats from other countries notice the one time and then again compassionate that the Netherlands is taking a peculiar position. Perhaps, one of them says, it is difficult for the cabinet to sell the seriousness of the case to the population because the Netherlands is so far from the Russian border.
In the past, in European budget debates, the Netherlands could count on the support of a group of supporters, including Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and Estonia. Almost all of those countries have shifted: they have become downright in favor of Eurobonds, or accept that the current situation is highly exceptional and requires extra money.
“The economical coalition no longer exists,” said a diplomat grinning last week by the end of the EU summit.
Far to get
The moment the House of Representatives agreed with the motion of Eerdmans, Heinen had already talked about the interpretation of the ideas of Von der Leyen at a dinner and a breakfast with his colleagues. The Leen Fund is considered an accomplished fact, one country cannot stop it with a veto. In the meantime, there is still a lot of room for details and debate in the implementation. Next week Von der Leyen will come up with the effects of the plan.
There is still a lot to be gained in that debate, also for the Netherlands. For example, a number of southern European governments, such as from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, are urged to be used more broadly. They are afraid that they cannot sell a fund for defense goals exclusively to their population – to the annoyance of northern countries. They fear that a broadening to ‘military mobility’ already means that it will soon be borrowing to install new asphalt.
There is also talk about the suggestion of Germany to stretch the budget rules for an even longer period. Especially so that Berlin can make his huge announced investments in his own country without getting into trouble in Brussels, others sniff. Even in this discussion, the Netherlands still finds a number of allies in his side.
But the opposition to the Leenfonds as a whole is difficult. Not to say: impossible. The fact that the Netherlands would even consider to negotiate an opt-out with the plan is more surprising elsewhere than annoyance: that is not possible at all. And apart from that, it sounds: the Netherlands is free to borrow money from the fund and not to use the smooth budget rules.
In The Hague that reality makes little difference, it appears Tuesday. NSC, which of the three critical coalition parties seemed to be the most inclined to a forest voice, remains strongly opposed to borrowing and relaxing the rules. “It increases the risk of a new and deep debt crisis,” said NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt in a statement at his voice for Eerdman’s motion. “That threatens livelihood and then countries are no longer able to help Ukraine.”
The fact that Heinen on Monday and Tuesday also made a point of the shelf life of debts does not change that.