Jesse Klaver sighs deeply when he stands on the stage of the Brabanthallen in Den Bosch at the end of the afternoon. The establishment of Progressive Netherlands, Pro for short, has just been approved by the vast majority of members of GroenLinks (96 percent) and PvdA (97 percent). Even Ad Melkert, the former PvdA leader who had been critical for so long, had been clapping in the front row.
No one seriously considered the scenario that the largest party merger since the formation of the CDA in 1980 would fail. But now that the process has come to an end, party leader Klaver and the rest of the party leadership are relieved. Of course, anything could have gone wrong at the party conference of the new party, in the packed Brabanthallen in Den Bosch. Critical speakers, procedural or technical hassle, perhaps a disappointing percentage of votes in favor.
None of that happens. There was a cheerful mood all day among the approximately 6,000 attendees. Members call the day ‘historic’ and are happy to experience it. There is no hassle. And there are indeed many speakers, members who still want to say something. Of all those speakers, only two are against the party merger. One of them, an older PvdA member wearing a T-shirt with former party leader Joop den Uyl on it, is booed by part of the audience.
GroenLinks or the PvdA might never have become the largest on their own. As Pros, both parties still hope that the left will remain a power factor in Dutch politics. But the run-up to this day was “an intensive process,” says Esther Mirjam-Sent, PvdA chairman. “We needed a lot of patience.”
Decisive moment in Nieuwegein
According to Sent, the PvdA congress in 2022 in Nieuwegein was a decisive moment in the merger process. The party leadership was still reluctant, but a majority of the members wanted cooperation to go faster. The Congress agreed to the merger of both factions in the Senate. The image that PvdA members had of GroenLinks, or whether those people can make compromises, changed that day.
The discussions at GroenLinks have also been “fierce” in recent years, says GroenLinks chairman Katinka Eikelenboom. However, that debate received less attention, because party prominents kept quiet, unlike the PvdA. Slowly she also saw that the parties had become more similar. “We sometimes started guessing. When we saw an older man with a beard and a red scarf, we thought: of course that is a PvdA member. And then we saw a young activist and we thought: she is definitely from GroenLinks. But very often those images were wrong.”
But before the members vote on the merger, they first watch a montage with nostalgic images from the history of both parties: Joop den Uyl, Paul Rosenmöller, Wim Kok, large demonstrations from the eighties, passionate speeches. And both party leaders also spend a lot of time talking about the past. The PvdA (1946) and GroenLinks (1990) were founded as a reaction to the spirit of the times, they say. The PvdA on the post-war crisis, GroenLinks on the right-wing restructuring policy of the 1980s. Pro, too, is their implicit message, is in a sense a counter-reaction, now that Dutch politics has become a lot more right-wing.
A new ideology
A lot of time in Den Bosch is spent on the organizational side of the party merger, for example on the question of how to proceed with the factions in the European Parliament. They now belong to various European umbrella factions: the PvdA members with the much larger S&D, GroenLinks with the Greens. The members still have to vote on this this autumn, although some members find the process too fast and too undemocratic, it appears.
A more important issue is not much discussed this day: what will be the common ideology of Pro? Because the parties are increasingly similar, but in essence they are deeply different. Social Democrats and Greens traditionally have a different worldview. Noortje Thijssen, director of the Scientific Bureau of GroenLinks, said last year: “GroenLinks are more activist, they are more likely to blame big business for the causes of problems, and strive for system change. PvdA members think more administratively, they see the narrow margins of politics.”
That cultural difference is still visible in Den Bosch. Members can choose outside about a dilemma about the economy: do you believe in ‘limiting capitalism’, or in ‘system change’? The latter option wins, while a large group still opts for the narrow margin of limiting.
Pro is working on a joint ideology, which, according to a concept piece, will be about ‘solidarity’. The idea is that caring for your neighbor is green and red. Jesse Klaver often says in his speech, like a mantra: “This country could be so much more honest.”
Stories of ‘ordinary people’
But Pro now seems to focus mainly on telling stories about, as Klaver calls it, “ordinary people.” They “pay the bill,” he says, “their taxes are going up, and the Jetten cabinet is making major cuts to health care and social security.” Klaver talks about such a person, John, a 63-year-old man who worked at ProRail and can now no longer work due to chronic pain. John is in danger of losing 600 to 700 euros, says Klaver.
Hans Spekman, the FNV chairman who is applauded for a long time, also has “a small story”. It is about a girl, “her hands full with books, who said: I have read them all”. Spekman thought the girl was clever, but the teacher pointed him to a room with two beds. A mother with a six-year-old son slept in one bed, and the girl slept in the other bed. They had nowhere else to live. “I could fill the entire afternoon with stories like this.”
Spekman, former chairman of the PvdA, was always critical of the merger process. “I was a bit cynical and gloomy, I see all kinds of difficult things.” Yet, he announces, he too will now become a member of Pro.
Also read
GroenLinks-PvdA yearns for a progressive change