The decline of the Senate: Free beer, procedural rumblings and bullying

The most interesting (and embarrassing) moment of the week took place the day before the municipal elections, in the Senate, in a debate with the top of the cabinet that hardly anyone came to watch.

The Hague is overloaded with customs and procedures. Most politicians and civil servants do not know them all, most outsiders do not know them all. Ideal instruments in the hands of experienced politicians.

And what happened on Tuesday in the Senate was unprecedented.

That evening the NOS, as usual before Election Day, a closing debate with party leaders. You could be critical of that, national politicians are not municipal candidates, but it has been happening for decades, and this is not a coincidence: familiar faces are the best vehicle for information transfer.

Only: this time the leader of the VVD, Mark Rutte, and the leader of D66, Sigrid Kaag, were not there. They had to be in the Senate.

There was a difference. Rutte was there of his own free will: since the war he handed over almost all campaign obligations to Sophie Hermans; he played the premier role. But Kaag, unlike Rutte, was claimed by the Senate. She had no choice.

So in effect, non-directly elected senators said: all well and good, such an election debate, but the Senate is way above that.

But when I looked into why this Senate debate was on the agenda in the first place, and then saw the painfully absurd outcome, I really understood what had happened here. As the war escalated and domestic attention turned to local elections, the Senate had transformed itself into the new House of Representatives. They rule this country.

And you knew: this couldn’t end well.

Accusations of role confusion regularly hit the Senate. It’s almost jaded discussions. You can reason: the Senate is a political body, accept that it adopts a political position. Even so, the Senate has only (and limited) control over new legislation: it almost always comes down to agreeing or rejecting it. Yes or no.

So in current discussions, for example about purchasing power, the senate lacks the means of power. ‘The primacy’ then rests with the House of Representatives.

This is also logical: Members of Parliament are directly elected. And if the senate nevertheless enters the territory of the House of Representatives, it in effect says: the voter can go for the pot.

Still, the Senate is becoming more assertive. It also has to do with the formation last year, when CDA and VVD blocked a coalition with PvdA and GroenLinks; in that case the cabinet would have had a majority in the senate. It’s not there now.

So it happened that in mid-February, when war was already looming, the Senate debated the government statement. Rutte was the first speaker from the cabinet. No surprise – prime ministers do those debates all the time (remember this).

A week later, February 22, two days before the war, the Senate voted in favor of a series of motions that Rutte had advised against.

These included preserving the link between AOW and the minimum wage, and opposition to cuts in youth care. What was striking about this: a monster alliance has arisen in the senate in the opposition (radical right, classical left and parties in the middle of it) that opposes Rutte IV frontally.

Although you could also call it a free beer coalition: Rutte accused the Senate of not specifying who had to pay for all those wishes.

After that, the procedural rumblings started. Because the House of Representatives thinks differently about the subjects of those motions, the cabinet can only meet the requirements of the Senate procedurally after the House of Representatives has revised its views. But in many cases the proposals on this matter have not even been submitted yet, so that the House of Representatives has not even been able to revise its positions, if it wanted to.

Ergo: current significance could those motions in the senate never have.

But the Senate has suggested this in recent weeks. After the votes on the motions, Paul Rosenmöller (GroenLinks) demanded a response from the cabinet “before March 8”, supported by Marjolijn Faber (PVV).

And when the cabinet missed that deadline, last Tuesday Faber, with the support of opposition parties, demanded in private an early reopening of the debate on the government statement, with Kaag.

A special choice, since Rutte did the debate earlier.

That same day, around the same time, Lilian Marijnissen (SP), Geert Wilders (PVV) and Jesse Klaver (GroenLinks) went wild on Kaag in the House of Representatives. She was not available for the Question Hour due to a speech in Limburg. “Gross disdain,” said Marijnissen. “Improve of the Chamber,” said Wilders. Klaver demanded that she still come to the Chamber.

Also special. Kaag had certainly violated the rules of the House, but the questions (about purchasing power) were untimely and again strangely addressed – there was no cabinet decision, everyone knew she could say nothing, and the responsible minister is Karien van Gennip (Social Affairs, CDA). ).

But the publicity had an impact. The Senate Clerk’s Office contacted the Treasury on March 8 about a debate on March 15, and presented two options: 4:15 PM or 8:30 PM. But Kaag was in Brussels that day for a European meeting, and did not know whether she would be back in time in the afternoon, while in the evening she had to go to the NOS debate.

And Finance did not want to be accused again that Kaag was not available for parliament after the fuss on Tuesday. So it kept quiet, which led to the suspicion in the Senate that it did not want to go to the NOS debate – which Finance and D66 later contradicted.

On Friday 11 March, Kaag, also on behalf of Rutte, sent the (meaningless) cabinet response to the motions to the Senate, which established that Kaag could not attend the NOS debate on Tuesday: the ‘topicality’ of the chambre de réflection won over current affairs. of the elections.

The course of events learned a few things. To start with: Kaag’s favoritism among the opposition is low. Vulnerable to a minister in her position.

It was also noticeable that parties that were disadvantaged by her strong performance in the final debate for the parliamentary elections in 2021 – GroenLinks, SP, PVV – were very active in preventing them from being back in the final debate on Tuesday. It was something of bullying, said one person involved, and you understood that.

And although those three parties strongly denied this: in the senate debate on Tuesday evening, with Rutte and Kaag, a few facts emerged that did not argue in favor of the Senate.

In addition to a hopeless PVV motion of no confidence, the Senate submitted two motions: one by Rosenmöller to provide a definitive answer about discounts on youth care before April 15, and one by Martin van Rooijen (50Plus) to clarify the link between AOW and AOW by 9 May. and get minimum wage.

Only: those deadlines also showed that the need for an emergency debate had never existed this week. This was also apparent from the fact that the entire Senate on Tuesday evening was unable to ask a single question that prompted Kaag to speak. She was silent throughout the debate.

The self-magnification of the Senate could not have been better illustrated. And you thought: but if it is displayed so shamelessly, you also know that a bigger accident there, later this year, is far from impossible.