There were the farmers’ protests, reports that established regional disadvantages and Provincial Council elections in which a party that wanted to stand up for regions became the largest everywhere. So you could have expected, says Tialda Haartsen, professor of rural geography in Groningen, that political parties would come up with concrete proposals in their programs for the House of Representatives elections as to which regions they want to develop and how.
But that was disappointing. Haartsen analyzed eighteen election manifestos together with colleagues from the Geodienst of the University of Groningen, by looking at how often place names, municipal names and province names were mentioned. It turns out that many parties generally pay attention to “the region”, but specifically mention the Randstad provinces and Groningen.
Especially Limburg
North Holland appears most often in the programmes. “This often concerns Tata Steel, Schiphol and Amsterdam,” says data researcher Govert Schoof, who analyzed the programs. And according to him, the fact that Groningen is mentioned a lot has everything to do with the gas dossier and the earthquakes. “Every province mentioned has a theme,” he says. In Flevoland this mainly concerns Lelystad Airport, in Zeeland the Borssele nuclear power plant.
The analysis shows that two parties have the strongest focus on all provinces in their programs: BBB and ChristenUnie. “GroenLinks-PvdA and NSC are also fairly divided across the country,” says Professor Haartsen. “And the PVV only mentions Limburg above average.” But there are also parties that hardly look outside the Randstad at all: FVD, Denk, BVNL and 50Plus write the least about the provinces.
It is also interesting, says Haartsen, “that parties in general do have many plans for ‘the region’, without making it clear exactly which region should do what.” They say quite good things, she says, such as a rural test or regional test, in which the effects of legislation are mapped out in advance. “But how? That remains unclear in most programs.” Many plans are easy to write down, says her colleague Schoof, “but it remains unclear who they are for and with what money.”
According to Haartsen, a long-term perspective on regional development is also lacking: “As a resident of the north, I find this interesting: it is now soaking wet in the Netherlands, we get that more often, and the sea level will rise sharply. How do we deal with that? The most common provinces in the programs are also below sea level. Perhaps in thirty or fifty years most people will live in higher parts of the Netherlands. But the parties don’t actually think about that.”
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Romantic image
Many words are spent on “facilities” in the countryside, the Groningen researchers saw. Underneath this lies a “romantic image” of the countryside “that no longer exists”, they write in an analysis, where the idea seems to be that if every village had a library, swimming pool and school, the problems would be solved. “Of course it is good to pay attention to facilities in the countryside, but having all basic facilities in every village is really not feasible. Policy in the regions has long been focused on accessible facilities,” Haartsen writes in that analysis. “In rural areas, citizens, together with local authorities, come up with many innovative combinations of facilities. I don’t read anything about this in the party programs.”
Of the major parties, the PVV pays the least attention to “the region”. “While some of those PVV voters live in those regions, do not feel heard and are against the established order. But there is no emphasis on it in their own program,” says Haartsen.
The question therefore becomes how parties will pay more attention to regional development after the elections. For example, BBB advocates a ministry that will focus on the regions. Haartsen has a different idea: “Bring back the Ministry of Spatial Planning. The city and region belong together. What we should look for: how do they hang together?”
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