Negotiations GS: Drenthe gets area deputies

Drenthe will have four area deputies. That proposal from the BoerBurgerBeweging is currently being negotiated by CDA, PvdA, VVD and the BBB. A new provincial government must approach things differently than politicians have done so far. An insight into the negotiations for a new provincial government with party chairman and BBB negotiator Gert-Jan Schuinder.

“We generally agree that we will have area deputies. In addition to your task as a deputy for agriculture or traffic, for example, you are also deputy for north, south, east or west Drenthe. You are the point of contact for everything in your area We still have to negotiate exactly what it will look like,” says Schuinder.

“If you, as an area deputy of North Drenthe, go to an evening about the cancellation of bus lines, but you are not the deputy of transport, then you take a public transport official with you. We think that this way of working is more direct and closer to the residents . More engaged.”

“And we see a central deputy who walks through Drenthe like a kind of skewer. For cross-border matters and the talks with Germany, The Hague and the EU.”

“We were the first to make a ‘source document’. A kind of rough sketch of what Drenthe should look like in that year. Think of reducing inequality between people, between rich and poor. Wider prosperity for everyone. For example, easily accessible villages via public transport.”

“In the conversations we are also fed by what others have sent to the provincial government. One of the eighty documents we received was the recent report on Inheritable Poverty in the Veenkoloniën (14,000 inhabitants, 4,000 of whom are children in very long-term poverty, ed. ) It really scared me.”

“Why those ten years looking ahead? You have to look beyond the four years of this new provincial government. At the same time we agreed: we are not going to close the coalition agreement.” There will therefore be more room for the Provincial Council to make policy together with the Provincial Executive.

Another firm agreement: evaluate the agreement after two years to see whether it is going in the right direction instead of drawing conclusions at the end after four years. BBB wants that through a citizens’ council, PvdA VVD and CDA are not that far yet, according to Schuinder. So that’s a big negotiating point.

According to Schuinder, these are all examples of new politics. “You also have to show that you are going to do things differently. Not just to the protest voters of the elections.”

“We are making nine building blocks for our council agreement. The first building block is administrative innovation. We will use that as a yardstick for the other eight building blocks that we are going to make,” says Schuinder.

And no, the ‘building block’ agricultural-natural-nitrogen will not be discussed last in the council negotiations. According to Schuinder, that will be building block three. The hot potato is therefore not going to be pushed forward until the last moment. In two weeks’ time, the negotiations will mainly focus on that third building block. Schuinder is sure: this part will be tough negotiations.

“Our commitment is clear: other solutions to adjust the nitrogen problem. No new nature will be added as long as the current nature has not been restored. No one can give us any guarantee that with the expansion of nature and the current nitrogen measures, the new nature will soon also be in terms of nitrogen. is also not ‘on the red’ In fact, even if you also buy out a hundred Drenthe farmers, we still have no guarantee that the current nature will be ‘on the green’ again.

Schuinder hopes that the elections to the Senate on 30 May will bring about a change in nitrogen legislation. As far as he is concerned, it should be ‘more in balance’. “We don’t have ten times Drenthe, we have one Drenthe and you can only organize that once.”

BBB, VVD, CDA and PvdA are also brooding over how to tell the rest of Drenthe how the negotiation process is going. Because normally this is something that takes place behind closed doors and they only open when there is an agreement. BBB has already put a few out-of-the-box ideas on the table. Schuinder: “Maybe a formation podcast or Formation TV.”

In the provincial elections BBB became the largest party with seventeen seats, just short of being the largest new entrant ever in Drenthe. The PvdA, VVD and CDA all lost seats. Together, the parties have 28 seats. 22 seats are needed for a majority.

Schuinder was optimistic just after the elections when he said that a new provincial government will be in place at the end of May. He had to adjust that once; the BBB group chairman now thinks that it should be done before the end of June.

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