Much more unfortunate, the new State Secretary Hans Vijlbrief could not have expressed himself on Monday, when he – just stepped off the platform – said that it was ‘a good sign’ that so many homeowners in the Groningen earthquake area wanted to claim a subsidy of 10,000 euros for making and beautifying their homes. The D66 member forgot to mention that the previous cabinet only reserved a budget (220 million) to make half of the approximately 50 thousand candidates happy.
The result was ‘degrading’, that description sounded most often. Thousands of people queued in the digital queue from early morning to midnight, often in vain. Even more poignant were the images from Winsum and Hoogezand, where dozens of mostly elderly people were numb in front of the town halls. A paper application could be made there.
The subsidy lottery mainly had losers. ‘Shame on you’, it opened Daily newspaper of the North the next day. A letter writer recalled how Frank Westerman in The Grain Republic describes how a gentleman farmer scattered the coins for his servants in the yard ‘as if he were feeding his chickens’. In ‘the land of the nobleman and the beggar’, where power and impotence traditionally rubbed off, an open nerve was touched. And again The Hague let Groningen down.
Common Enemy
While in theory a common enemy increases mutual harmony, this is not always the case in Groningen. The difficult reinforcement operation is already causing social rifts, where – as in Overschild – part of the village is waiting for a new house, another part is not. Now the neighbor who asked his children (handy with the digital pressing for festival tickets) for help and who had browsers open here and there, got a reproachful look.
“It’s just a humiliation,” said Ineke Pol (67) from Noordbroek. “We have to fight over it.” And that after years of fighting for compensation.
‘Divide and conquer’ cannot be the shadow motto of a cabinet that promised a ‘new administrative culture’, and Groningen not for the first time to get better. ‘What was intended as something extra has ended in a serious hangover’, the Groningen King’s Commissioner René Paas summed up on Wednesday evening during an emergency debate in the Provincial Council.
How could it go so wrong? It starts with an administrative agreement from 2020 and ‘the desire to give residents in the earthquake area a certain form of compensation’. Not compensation for cracks, but an allowance for years of bureaucratic struggle and uncertainty about the house as a safe place to stay and possible preventive reinforcement measures. 10 thousand euros, to be spent on solar panels, double glazing or a new kitchen.
Fatal calculation
Once again, good intentions prove to be the best recipe for misery. The 10 thousand euros appears on page 7 of the agreement. The budget (300 million in total, part of which has already been provided) as well. Even then the fatal calculation could have been made: not enough money for everyone.
Everyone knew that. The Northern Netherlands Partnership (SNN) already warned of a stampede prior to the opening of the scheme (Monday morning at 9 am). The disclaimer: it’s not us, but the government that’s about the budget. Groningen insisted on more until deep into the cabinet formation, Paas told the Provincial Council. In vain.
Regional administrators themselves are not exempt either. While Easter still got ‘tummy ache’ from the queue on Monday, repentance followed on Wednesday. His signature is also under the administrative agreement from 2020. And as CdK he is chairman of the executive board of the SNN. ‘I was involved and I feel responsible. It was an embarrassing display. We looked too optimistically at something we could have sensed on our clogs.’
Mayor Beukema van Delfzijl (‘we were seeing blind’) acknowledged to his city council on Thursday that the scheme should have been canceled without an adequate budget. “I blame myself that we didn’t. Apologies are in order.’
Free money
Why it was seriously expected that half of the candidates would miss the chance of free money, no one can explain anymore. And why was the budget not simply divided by the number of rights holders? Then everyone got less, but everyone got something. Groningen had signed for it.
Has that option been discussed? The SNN again refers to The Hague. The Ministry of Economic Affairs does not want to say anything about it, because parliamentary questions to the same effect require answers first.
With the appointment of Hans Vijlbrief – formally responsible for Mining, in practice State Secretary for Groningse Affairs – the cabinet intended a new start in the lingering dossier. That start was downright false, the minister will also realize. Last week, his predecessor Stef Blok had to report that the gas tap will be closed considerably less this year than announced.
The perception of a ‘doubling’ of gas extraction is somewhat objectionable. Last year 7.8 billion cubic meters were taken from Groningen, this year probably 7.6 billion, although 3.9 billion was promised. After the cabinet decided in 2018 to turn off the gas tap due to the earthquakes, the phase-out initially went faster than expected. Now the setbacks (the delayed construction of a nitrogen factory, more exports to Germany than expected) are happening too quickly.
It was inevitable that the cabinet would still step in, as happened on Friday. With an extra 250 million, everyone for whom Monday ended in minor can still be served. An indulgence for the subsidy blunder, but the disaster has already been done. ‘This does not contribute to the confidence of the Groningers.’ It was Vijlbrief himself who acknowledged it. That confidence was already more than fragile before he took office. And he doesn’t get a second chance to make a first impression.