Jan Peter Balkenende wanted to use the conscription law to send problem youth to education camps. Sybrand Buma wanted to reintroduce active military service, he saw it as a way to create more unity in society. In both cases it remained an idea. Now the CDA is trying again.
In Amersfoort, where CDA members gathered this Saturday for an election congress in which the campaign for the Provincial States and Water Board elections was kicked off, CDA leader Wopke Hoekstra made a plea for the reintroduction of active military service. It was suspended in the Netherlands more than a quarter of a century ago. The CDA wants to reverse that. Young people between the ages of 18 and 25, Hoekstra said, “can spend a year strengthening our armed forces and national security, or on a social task, such as care and welfare.” That would make the Netherlands “safer and more united”.
The Christian Democrats also know that there is no majority for the plan in the House of Representatives. But the idea fits with a story that the CDA has been wanting to tell for a while now, and therefore also in the campaign. It is about a sense of community, about norms and values. In Amersfoort the words ‘together’ and ‘connection’ were used above average. And if possible, CDA members would like to say on stage and around it that it is time for ‘less me and more us’.
community fund
Earlier in the week, the parliamentary party came up with plans to invest more in the region in order to combat inequality between the Randstad and the rest of the Netherlands. Among other things, the faction came up with the idea of establishing a community fund with which facilities, such as community centers or swimming pools, can be financed.
It is no coincidence that the CDA wants to appropriate that subject. First of all, the Christian Democrats feel the pressure of the BoerBurgerBeweging of Caroline van der Plas, which focuses very emphatically on non-urban areas. The two parties are making opposite movements in the polls: BBB is on a win, the CDA is on a loss.
But that the CDA emphatically starts again about community spirit and the region also has to deal with something that is more fundamental than electoral competition. After the election defeat in the parliamentary elections of 2021, the party asked former chairman of the Scientific Institute Richard van Zwol to consider the recognisability of the party. And behind the scenes CDA members knew: this is also about the survival of the party. Van Zwol wrote an agenda for the CDA, with topics that the party should focus on in the coming years. One of them: connecting differences. It is not really new for the CDA, after the turn of the century Jan-Peter Balkenende’s story about norms and values made the CDA the largest party. But in the years that followed, it increasingly faded into the background. The Christian Democrats instead tried to profile themselves on themes such as the economy, security and migration.
Europe’s external borders closed
Wopke Hoekstra also spoke about the latter subject on Saturday. “The current numbers are simply unsustainable,” he said. Hoekstra repeated well-known CDA positions, which concern reception in the region, a European external border and the European agreement that a refugee must go through the asylum procedure in the country of arrival. He added that the external borders “must be closed all around Europe”. According to him, this is necessary to keep the internal borders open.
What was striking is that Hoekstra almost did not talk about the subject that is so important to the CDA supporters: the nitrogen problem. In the summer, he turned his back on it through an interview General Journal against cabinet policy, after that he did not want to say anything about it anymore.
Research by EenVandaag recently showed that the majority of the provincial party leaders for the CDA do not like the nitrogen deadline of 2030. Moreover, they think the money that the cabinet has reserved for nitrogen plans, 24 billion euros, is far too little. In Amersfoort, the word ‘nitrogen’ came up only once. Hoekstra had, he said to the room full of CDA members, read back “literally CDA motions” in Johan Remkes’ nitrogen advice. “That’s the CDA at work!” Behind him sat the provincial party leaders on a podium. They looked out at his back.