Anyone who wants to understand the attitude of this cabinet when it comes to agriculture, climate and nature, about everything that is green and must become green, should also follow what happened in Luxembourg this week, in addition to The Hague.
In The Hague, hopes for an Agricultural Agreement collapsed on Tuesday evening, after umbrella club LTO called off further talks and left the cabinet bewildered.
A government vision with farmers’ participation was crucial, it was heard for months, to restore calm and solve the nitrogen crisis. But according to the LTO negotiators, the cabinet is demanding too much from the farmers, so they left.
In that light, it was telling what happened that same day in Luxembourg, at a meeting of European nature ministers. There it was minister Christianne van der Wal (VVD) who stepped on the brakes on behalf of the Netherlands. The European nature restoration law was on the table, which should encourage member states to do much more to restore their nature.
A large majority of member states agreed, but the Netherlands remains against. “We cannot do everything at the same time in the same limited space,” said Van der Wal. In her own home, Van der Wal may be regarded as a pioneer in the nitrogen dossier, in Europe she led the group of troublemakers around the law.
A split? In fact, the two cabinet positions are not as contradictory as it may seem. After decades of virtually unlimited growth in a small area, the Netherlands is now forced to make choices. In short, the reduction of livestock and the opposition to even more mandatory rules to improve nature both stem from the conclusion that Johan Remkes already drew in his nitrogen advice to the cabinet: not everything is possible.
Political dynamite
The precariousness of this balancing act became painfully clear this week. Because the talks with LTO that took place in The Hague also showed that the farming sector is not waiting for any form of contraction, no matter how much ‘perspective’ the cabinet offers.
It’s not the only obstacle. There is a growing awareness among political parties, particularly on the right, that climate, nature and especially agriculture are political dynamite. Vulnerable to one, a tool of power to the other. See the CDA, see the BBB.
Read also: According to experts, the provisional Agricultural Agreement was still far too vague
This realization is also seeping through in Brussels. No commentator there these days does not refer to BBB’s victory in the Netherlands. A few years ago everyone in Europe was talking about the French ‘yellow vests’, now the ‘Dutch farmers’ are popping up everywhere as a specter. And so the Christian Democratic party, which also includes CDA and ChristenUnie, strongly opposes the nature restoration law, which will also affect European agriculture. This resistance is part of the long run-up to European elections next year, in which the Christian Democratic party is moving to the right. That is where the electoral opportunities lie, after recently right-wing coalitions were formed in Italy, Sweden and Finland, among others. Not entirely coincidentally, those three countries were also against the nature restoration law this week. A pull to the right will probably also follow in Spain next month.
An analyst associated with the party described this week on Politico how the Netherlands serves as an example of how ‘rural Europe’ can successfully turn against ‘urban policy elites’. “The reality,” wrote this Eoin Drea, “is that flyover Europe is beginning to find its voice.”
There is an election theme here. After all, that voice must be listened to, says the party, in order not to lose people in the green transition. “We will never meet our biodiversity goals in conflict with rural areas,” Christian Democratic leader Manfred Weber said of the law last week. “We will only succeed if we work with them.”
Experiment Netherlands
Plans for nature restoration, critics say, are insufficiently part of an overarching strategy for European agriculture. That is not entirely true, by the way: quite a few pots of money were previously set aside to enable farmers to become greener. Only: you can install so many shock absorbers, eventually you will not get around the transition. And just like in the Netherlands, this will also mean shrinkage elsewhere in Europe.
It is precisely ‘experiment in the Netherlands’ that now shows: you will not get there by poldering. Not even if you have as much money to distribute as The Hague. The Netherlands may have experience with fierce farmers’ resistance, but that does not mean that the cabinet has found an effective answer to it. The gap between what needs to be done – given the poor state of nature and biodiversity – and what there is support for was too great.
Does this mean that the ‘spectre of the Netherlands’ is growing? Is agriculture the inevitable stumbling block for European green ambitions? According to some, the picture in Luxembourg was in any case not pretty. Suddenly the usually green Netherlands found itself in the no camp with Poland, among others.
But the end of the polder consultation also offers opportunities. Now the cabinet itself has to get to work. That need not be entirely unfavorable, because the starting position was never ideal for the cabinet. It had to be hoped that LTO indeed represented the entire agricultural sector if an agreement was reached.
In addition, the cabinet had to constantly coordinate matters itself. Agriculture minister Piet Adema (CU) conducted the negotiations, but he is not in charge of the money and regularly had to visit his colleagues in the cabinet to see what concessions were possible.
Now Adema can work out his own plan with the cabinet. When the House of Representatives debates the closure of the talks next week, Adema will emphasize that that plan will not be as favorable for the sector as the proposal that LTO rejected this week.
Encapsulate, but don’t give in to all demands. Don’t beg for support, but set the course yourself. It is a risky venture, but perhaps that is a lesson that Brussels will soon learn from the approach taken by The Hague.