It is just after midnight on the night of Wednesday 17 May when Minister of Agriculture Piet Adema takes the floor. The negotiators of the agricultural agreement have been meeting for hours in the Jacobzaal of the Villa Ockenburg in The Hague. They are tired and want to go home. Three farmers’ organizations want to know from the minister whether he has the budget for an important point of the almost finalized draft agreement. Adema looks at the group and says that he must admit that he cannot offer “long-term financing” to compensate farmers who are obliged to convert their agricultural activity into nature conservation. The cabinet, he explains, believes that financial compensation for these ‘ecosystem services’ should not be paid by the government alone.
The farmers are stunned. Have all those months of negotiations been for nothing? The agricultural consultations already started in December. Sjaak van der Tak, chairman of LTO Netherlands, says that talking further like this is pointless. Can he still believe the agreements that have already been made?
Just like before the activist Agractie, the largest farmers’ organization is now also threatening to leave the consultation. Then, Adema knows, there will be no agricultural agreement, with all the political consequences that entails. He consults with Mark Rutte’s agricultural adviser who is present. They decide to call the prime minister out of bed. Whether he can come immediately to save the meeting. A little later – it is a quarter past one – Rutte drives up the long driveway of the estate in The Hague in his old Saab. He spends the rest of the night mediating. At half past seven in the morning, the group comes out with small eyes. The interlocutors must admit that there is no agreement yet, but that they have agreed to continue talking. Rutte’s nightly intervention has therefore succeeded – the agricultural agreement has not yet exploded.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte was called out of bed. Whether he can come immediately to save the talks about agriculture
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The chief negotiators will meet again this Wednesday in the hope of a breakthrough in the difficult process. Where previous attempts used the term ‘D-day’, expectations have been tempered this time. A spokesperson for the independent moderator of the consultation says that it will take another week for “a final decision” on the “negotiators’ agreement”.
According to most interlocutors, Piet Adema’s disappointing attitude to the failed ‘Night of Ockenburg’ is not an isolated incident. The participants in the so-called ‘main table’ often noticed that Adema was never really able to make concrete promises during negotiations. “The minister works hard and is of good will,” says a co-negotiator, “but he is constantly whistled back by the cabinet.” A member of parliament of the coalition recognizes this. “Adema simply has no mandate to negotiate.”
They think they know why. Things already went wrong with the formation of Rutte IV, says a participant in the main table. During the constitutional deliberation, during which the portfolios are divided, “the Christian Union has been sleeping.” The result: her minister of agriculture – first Henk Staghouwer, now Piet Adema – became ‘the minister without money’. And the second minister in the same department, VVD member Christianne Van der Wal, became ‘the minister with the money’.
Strictly speaking, Van der Wal is indeed the second in the ministry – the minister for Natuur en Nitrogen – the preposition ‘voor’ matters in the Hague hierarchy. As a minister by Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality is Adema first in rank, but Van der Wal has much more power. She is responsible for the ambitious nitrogen targets from the coalition agreement to restore nature. In addition, she has two means with which she can put pressure on other ministers. She has so-called perseverance power with which she can push through her will in the event of deadlocks in the Council of Ministers. And two: she manages the Transition Fund with more than 24 billion euros, which is intended to financially support the sustainability of the agricultural sector until 2035.
He works hard and is of good will, but is always whistled back by the cabinet
Negotiator agricultural agreement
Due to this construction, Adema cannot make any concrete commitments at the main table of the agricultural agreement – he always has to go back to the cabinet to hear how far he can go. He walks that round every Tuesday morning at Prime Minister Rutte’s Minister of General Affairs. Here comes the Council for the Physical Environment (RFL), a subgroup of the Council of Ministers in which the thirteen most involved ministers speak about the organization of the Netherlands. Think of: Hugo de Jonge (Living), Mark Harbers (Infrastructure) and Van der Wal (Nitrogen).
Piet Adema provides this council with a weekly update on the progress and obstacles of the agricultural agreement. His colleagues ask critical questions and let them know what they think still needs to be done. The day after the failed consultation in Villa Ockenburg, his colleagues decided to intervene. At the request of Prime Minister Rutte, various sources around the cabinet confirm, Van der Wal and State Secretary Marnix van Rij (Finance, CDA) were instructed to solve the problem of ecosystem services, one of the breaking points of the agricultural agreement.
Solution
Where Adema had to inform the farmers’ organizations last month that he could offer “no long-term financing” for nature management, Van Rij and Van der Wal will have to come up with something. The starting point is that the government is quite prepared to make money available for a certain period. This must then be paid for from a special eco-levy and from existing funds, but not just from Van der Wal’s Transition Fund. The government also considers it important that in the long term market parties such as banks and the agri-industry will contribute.
For Piet Adema it is important that there is a proposal that the cabinet and its discussion partners at the main table can live with. “Piet cannot arrive with the same message,” says a coalition source. After the weekly consultation of the ministerial sub-club, Minister Van der Wal said on Tuesday afternoon that they had devised “a formula” for ecosystem services, but that it was not certain whether this would be discussed during the consultation this Wednesday. It typifies the working method of this government: the person who is in charge of the money does not actively participate in the negotiations.