They will again be sitting at the table with eight of them this Thursday evening: Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD), Deputy Prime Ministers Sigrid Kaag (D66), Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) and Carola Schouten (ChristenUnie), and one extra minister from each government party. Caroline van der Plas of BBB is not there, but the shadow of her huge election victory hangs over the table of the crisis meeting of Rutte IV: will D66 leader Kaag give in to the CDA, which, like BBB, wants to make the nitrogen plans less strict Or else it might go down completely? Or to the CDA and the VVD, who want to limit migration?
Also read this piece about Tuesday’s cabinet meeting: Rutte: mainly ‘signal from concerned voter’ discussed during cabinet meeting, nitrogen targets not discussed
You can hear around the group of negotiators that it is not an acute, major crisis: otherwise they would have sat together immediately after the elections of March 15. Last Tuesday evening they sat together for the first time to discuss the situation. Although you can also hear that it is not certain whether there will still be a (non-caretaker) cabinet next week. CDA members in The Hague make a defeated, sometimes somewhat bitter impression: Member of Parliament Mustafa Amhaouch of that party was remarkably fierce against Rutte in a debate about the EU last week. He called him, to the visible irritation of the Prime Minister, “a bit naive” and accused him that plans were thought up and discussed endlessly, and again thought up and discussed, but when were they ever carried out?
A lot at stake for Hoekstra
Especially for Wopke Hoekstra as CDA leader there is a lot at stake: the support in the party for him seems conditional for the time being. This week he asked BBB if he could visit Van der Plas and how uncomfortable that was for him, became clear when he – with three TV cameras opposite him – almost walked into the room of the Information and Archives service and not Van der Plas’ room. Lake. He had never been there before.
Van der Plas had set up two red chairs in a corner. After more than 45 minutes, Hoekstra only wanted to say what politicians almost always say after such a conversation: “It was a good conversation.” Van der Plas said afterwards that she had told Hoekstra that it was best for Rutte IV to split up. “It is a bad marriage, and D66 is not going to move.”
Van der Plas had also told him how CDA members in the House of Representatives had treated her in the past two years. How hardly anyone greeted her when they walked past the BBB faction room to their own rooms – they are on the same corridor – and that there were sometimes CDA motions signed by other parties, but which she had not seen beforehand.
But now everything seems different. Apart from Hoekstra, there are already other CDA ministers who have indicated that they would like to visit Van der Plas. And European Commissioner Frans Timmermans (PvdA) will drop by: mid-April. The appointment is almost set. It is not yet entirely certain whether he will sit on the same red chairs as Wopke Hoekstra, the location (in The Hague) is still being discussed.