There is still considerable debate in the House of Representatives. But groundbreaking results were not forthcoming. Everything and everyone is waiting for a new cabinet. The parties investigating this first go on holiday.
Mona Keijzer almost managed to carry out border controls at Ter Apel and Jimmy Dijk could have easily reduced the energy tax and rent increase. But there will be no real breakthroughs in the House of Representatives for a while. Everyone is waiting for the four parties to negotiate a new cabinet.
Every day, a group of journalists sit and do nothing for hours on a comfortable red bench near a pair of revolving doors on the first floor of the House of Representatives building. Frustrating, because Ronald Plasterk and the leaders of PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB only come up with meaningless answers. It’s radio silence.
Yet this is what it’s all about. Without a deal between Wilders, Yeşilgöz, Omtzigt and Van der Plas, not much will get off the ground.
It is not that it is no longer about anything in the House of Representatives, which is in full meeting further down the building this week. Migration, social security, nitrogen, everything passes by.
The water is on people’s lips
Let’s arrange a lower energy tax and a ban on rent increases, right? Jimmy Dijk, the new Groningen leader of the SP, will challenge the PVV with fresh energy during the autumn consultations on Tuesday. “The water is on people’s lips. I see a majority in front of me and get used to it, I want to get this done quickly,” he tells the rest of the House.
But PVV member Tony van Dijck shrugs it off. That’s fine, a lower energy tax and less rent increase. But it also has to be paid for and without the green light from the forming foursome further down the building, the PVV votes against everything. As a result, GroenLinks-PvdA, SP and some left-wing parties together do not have a third of the seats in the House for their great social plans.
Things are also at a standstill in the area of asylum. For a year now, VVD State Secretary Eric van der Burg has not gotten much further than “working really hard” to consult with everyone around Ter Apel, but sufficient extra shelter and better supervision are simply not possible.
We really have to do something
Ter Apel is also in dire straits, says Mona Keijzer of the BBB. “We really have to do something now for the residents of the Northern Netherlands because this is no longer possible.” On Wednesday, a long committee meeting about Ter Apel led to nothing, so Keijzer attempted to introduce border controls in Groningen by motion on Thursday. -Drenthe borders and Germany. “After all, there is an emergency in Ter Apel.”
Kati Piri of GroenLinks-PvdA, Anne-Marijke Podt of D66 and Don Ceder of the Christian Union react shocked. How did Keijzer imagine this with the open internal borders in the EU? No, don’t check every car, Keijzer answers. “We all know very well what kind of cars people come here with. We can take out white vans as a deterrent example.”
But she doesn’t make it. “Unfortunately, Chairman, no majority yet,” Keijzer said dramatically after the vote. Although the 71 votes of the PVV, VVD, FvD and of course its own BBB are at least more than the barely 40 seats for the social security motions of SP and GroenLinks-PvdA.
Neighborhood farmers
Agricultural policy is also at a standstill. The new agricultural spokespersons of BBB and NSC, Cor Pierik from Genemuiden and Harm Holman from Roden, are trying to have the nitrogen policy and the approach to peak loads adjusted. But the new, strict leader of the House of Representatives, Martin Bosma, mainly portrays them as peasants who first have to learn how things work in the real parliament.
Pieter Grinwis of the Christian Union does clash with the VVD over money for farmers who provide green services. Grinwis calls the fact that the VVD wants to wait for the cabinet and does not simply support a motion as “cowardly diving behavior”. Only after some negotiations with the four intended coalition partners did he manage to get a watered-down motion passed.
To get anything done, you really have to be with the new right-wing majority in the House. Just before that cabinet comes into being? “We are now going on a Christmas holiday first,” Plasterk says cheerfully in front of the revolving doors to the waiting journalists on the red bench.
Arend van Wijngaarden is a parliamentary reporter for Dagblad van het Noorden