“Yes, there is a lot going on and yes, there is also pressure on the cabinet, but ‘back to the drawing board’, you would think that you are going to produce a completely new drawing, and I don’t think that is the intention” , the minister told the NOS on Wednesday evening. In an interview with The Telegraph On Wednesday morning, Hoekstra said that the war in Ukraine will probably mean that the cabinet will have to ‘go back to the drawing board’. This means that the two ministers, who exchanged posts during the formation of the new government, are opposed to each other.
On Monday, the House of Representatives adopted a widely supported motion calling for more money to be invested in Defence, with the caveat that it should not be at the expense of other ‘investments’. This includes the climate fund, for which 35 billion euros will be made available in the brand new coalition agreement. In addition to being a minister, Kaag is also the leader of D66, for whom climate funds are very important. “Given the climate situation, it seems irresponsible to me to say: we are doing one thing for another.”
“There is so much going on right now,” Hoekstra told this newspaper. “The world is turned upside down. This means that the cabinet has to go back to the drawing board to see what this means for policy across the board.”
Concrete
The coalition agreement is therefore not cast in concrete, Hoekstra believes. “In the past, we have often seen that a coalition agreement becomes outdated after a while and that you have to renegotiate the agreements. It may be uncomfortable for The Hague, but geopolitics does not adhere to the Dutch coalition agreement. I think you should let the most important be the most important. We are now dealing with a potential watershed in the European security situation. I think we should go back to the drawing board. Then we have to answer the question: what does it mean if we give more priority to defense?”
He also indicated that he ‘did not want to sit in the chair of the Minister of Finance’ – colleague Kaag.