‘Schiphol’ and ‘to shrink’ has long been an unlikely combination of words. But it was really there on Thursday, in the digital Telegraph: ‘Government cuts Schiphol: airport must cut back at least 10 percent’. I immediately went into denial mode, sure The Telegraph again, Schiphol cannot downsize at all, they have no idea what that means. But a little later, the Hague editors of de Volkskrant checked the message and it turned out: it was correct.
It was unbelievable, shocking news. For years you were annoyed by the brutal Schiphol Airport, which believed it could afford everything, which lied and cheated – in the knowledge that there was always a lobby from The Hague to protect the airport. There was always that lisping director, PvdA member Dick Benschop, who talked about ‘moderate and balanced growth’, and who dreamed of the 550 thousand flight movements per year, 10 percent more than the current maximum. In the growth charts you could see how that had to be gradually increased to 780 thousand in the near future.
It was not Benschops and Schiphol’s concern that this would make one of the most densely populated areas of the Netherlands uninhabitable. Plus, there were always the promises of planes that would be quieter than a Tesla and kept aloft by super-clean biofuel or solar panels. We citizens were expected to believe that.
Schiphol had to grow, because after all, it was the ‘job engine’ of the Netherlands, a message that was hammered in year after year, no matter how one report after another pointed out that things were not too bad, with those jobs, with those contribution to GDP and the importance of the hub function for the business climate.
And suddenly they are no longer there, Schiphol’s growth ambitions. Gone like snow in the sun. The number of flight movements has to go from the cabinet to 450 – perhaps 420 thousand. A miracle!
Did State Secretary Mark Harbers no longer know, was he stuck? Was he stuck in the dossier on nitrogen emissions and the nature permit, the disastrous report about the production of particulate matter that is about to come, the noise nuisance around the airport and the problems that this causes in house construction?
Over the decades, every Dutch minister with Schiphol in his portfolio has had only one assignment: pamper the airport, tolerate and condone it, facilitate growth. The fact that Mark Harbers now opts for structural contraction is not because he has suddenly become radicalized.
Circumstances have changed and quite suddenly.
In March Harbers told the House of Representatives that Schiphol was allowed to grow, provided it was made more sustainable and the nuisance would decrease. GroenLinks and the Party for the Animals were already arguing for downsizing, but according to Harbers that was ‘not a starting point’ for the cabinet. He just wanted ‘shrinkage of the negative effects’: the typical air bicycle ride to which Schiphol and The Hague have treated us for years.
Three months later there is a sudden contraction.
Perhaps because of the chaos at Schiphol, Harbers has realized that further growth is not possible at all. He may have heard from nitrogen minister Christianne van der Wal that you cannot put the noose around the neck of the farmers and in the meantime let Schiphol go its own way. Hugo de Jonge may have had a heart-to-heart with him about house building.
Perhaps there is something different and he has an alternative plan up his sleeve, with Lelystad, Rotterdam/The Hague or Maastricht.
Schiphol, shrinkage and nothing else, it just doesn’t work for me yet.