By Max Smeets

A couple of months ago Standard & Poor’s announced that it was putting almost all the eurozone countries on ‘credit watch’.[1] This meant that only 6 euro zone countries still left with an AAA rating – Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, France, Germany, and Luxembourg – also faced a good chance of losing that desirable status within the next two months.[2]  France has since faced the fact that it was a real warning as it saw their credit rating falling.

Back then, S&P said their review was prompted “by our belief that systemic stresses in the eurozone have risen in recent weeks to the extent that they now put downward pressure on the credit standing of the eurozone as a whole.”[3]

At that moment, with the Netherlands not being the big sinner in the European sovereign debt fiasco, one might argue that it was the geographical location and openness of the economy that put the Dutch in a precarious position – ie. the problems in inter-bank trading and low export profits.

A couple of days ago, rating agency Fitch[4] also expressed their doubts about the Dutch triple-A status. But how different in nature was this warning. Fitch’s word of warning was purely a response to the internal political and economic turbulence after the failure of the Catshuis’ budget cut negotiations. [5] The rating agency mentions that while “the financial and economic risks of the eurozone crisis remain significant, the uncertainty about domestic policies increased.” [6] [7]

With the eurozone’s fifth-largest economy seeming to become the latest victim of resistance to EU-imposed austerity, a remarkable political comeback was there yesterday when the chairmen of the VVD, CDA, D66, Groenlinks[8] and ChirstenUnie with Minister De Jager of Finance announced that they reached an agreement on a package of austerity measurements.[9]

The ‘Kunduz coalition’ agreed, in general terms, on a number of reforms. For instance, there will be changes regarding the dismissal rights and on the housing market. Concerning the latter, the transfer tax remains at 2 percent, and the interest-only mortgage will be abolished. Concerning the former, the politicians agreed that the state pension age will gradually go up from 2013 onwards. [10]

According to VVD’er Stef Blok[11], with five parties around the table, “all parties had to give in”.  In the end, however, “the Dutch people win” [12], Blok adds. Still, if we would like to understand how it is possible that this political mix has come to an agreement and why it all had to be done so hurriedly, we can only point to the higher bosses in Brussels instead of to the Dutch people. The Dutch government has to send a letter to Brussels before the 30^th of April indicating how they will cut back on their budget deficit to get to the 3% norm.

This letter is evidently much more than just a financial plan with a bunch of numbers and assumptions. It is a desperate call to the European Commission, and simultaneously to the credit rating agencies, asking them to keep the Dutch financial identity of being a reliable economic power-house intact.

At this moment in time, the Dutch can only hope that Fitch and the other credit agencies have gained enough confidence that the crucial link between national politics and economics is no longer out of order. Because that is what it is in the end all about: confidence.

By Max Smeets and Koen Bovend’eerdt

The pharaoh dreamed that he stood by the river, and out of that river there came seven fat cows, who fed in the reed-grass. What followed was that seven lean cows came out of the river and ate the seven fat cows. The pharaoh awoke, but then went back to sleep again and dreamed that seven good ears of corn came up on one stalk, after which seven thin ears sprung up after them and swallowed the good ears.

The pharaoh awoke again. In the morning of March 19th, 2012, at 9.30, the wise men of the Centraal Plan Bureau (CPB) told that the 7 good years of increasing purchasing power covering 2002-2009 were over, and the prediction was that, from 2010, 6 to 7 years of decline in purchasing power would follow.

It was expected that the CPB would tell a similar story like it did on 1st March. On that day, the CPB told the government that the Dutch economy will shrink this year by 0.75 percent. This time however the CPB sketched an even worse scenario. The Dutch newspapers were then quick to assert that the Dutch economy is going even faster downhill and that we are headed towards another recession. Next to the decline in purchasing power, the CPB states that the average economic growth over the 2011-2015 period will be 1% lower than the earlier estimated 1.25%, as calculated by the Rutte Cabinet in 2010. Furthermore, the unemployment rate will increase to 6% in 2013 (545.000 unemployed), and the budget deficit will widen to approximately 4.6% of GDP.

Concerning the latter, if the current Cabinet wants to meet the required 3% budget deficit of GDP as prescribed by the EU, it will have to cut 9 billion Euros from the government budget. However, politicians rapidly responded to the issue of the 3% limit. Stef Blok of the liberal party VVD said that the 3% from Brussels is not holy, although the VVD has always been in favour of fiscal soundness. Some see the upcoming budget cuts as an opportunity to structurally reform the Dutch economy for the better, while others see the Dutch economy being propelled in a downwards spiral, due to the cuts. Frits Wester agrees with this latter position and has an important lesson for politicians: “The purchasing power figures are not all positive. The government should look at the cuts and ensure that the purchasing power of people does not deteriorate even further”.

One should however not be misled by all these claims and numbers. There is more to economic growth than consumer confidence, growth percentages and unemployment numbers (as was already made clear in an earlier HB article, The Dutch Double Dip). We should ask ourselves what these numbers are based on. What is explicitly or implicitly assumed in the CPB’s calculations? But maybe even more important, what are the consequences of the CPB’s assumptions? Regarding the last question, although not much is known to date, sooner or later Rutte will come out of the Catshuis and reveal his exact policy of austerity, thereby taking into consideration the pessimistic scenario of the CPB.

Yet, pessimistic or not, as Adam Posen already told us in 2010 in a speech to the Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Shipping (entitled The Case for Doing More), what policy makers believe about what will happen in the future may in the end be self-fulfilling. Active (demand-side) policy might help to stimulate investment and make sure that this period of relatively high unemployment does not result in long term unemployment, whereas “a policy that starts from the opposite may be vindicated ex post facto”. So let this be a warning when we look at Rutte’s austerity measures in the near future. With these predictions of the CPB, the Netherlands might take policy ineffectiveness and the seven lean cows for granted.

[Thanks to mspotilas for the image]

Since 2008 the ‘war on drugs’ in the Netherlands has been waged by the Taskforce Aanpak Georganiseerde Henneptelt (TGH: Taskforce against Organised Marijuana Cultivation). Looking to take the whole soft drug debate away from being an issue of public health towards being purely about (organised) crime, it is the TGH that has provided some of the statistical ammunition for the ongoing conservative political campaign against the coffeeshops. But as recent reports have indicated, the stats just don’t add up.

Led by police chief Max Daniel, the TGH declared in late 2008 that the illegal export of Dutch marijuana amounted to around 500,000 kilos a year, worth approximately €2bn. If gathered in one location, this was the equivalent of the entire province of Utrecht covered in illegal plantations. The announcement did the rounds of the national media and became accepted as ‘fact’. The soft drug situation was out of control and Daniel’s TGH was leading the fight-back.

But there was one problem – it wasn’t true. To mark the parliament’s wietpas debate at the beginning of March, both the Groene Amsterdammer  (‘Nederland Importland’, 1-3-2012) and KRO’s Reporter (De Nederwietoorlog, 2-3-2012) took a hard look at the details. In the Groene Joeri Boom and Reinier Bijman took the TGH story apart piece by piece. By raising the criminal threat of illegal marijuana growers, control over the issue has been taken away from The Ministry of Health by the Ministry of Security and Justice (“repression versus harm reduction”). While the national police corps (KLPD) was talking of an export figure of somewhere between 20% and 80% of Dutch illegal production (i.e. ‘we have no idea’) and the 2008 National Threat Analysis declared a 15-74% range (i.e. ‘we have no idea either’), Daniel and the TGH launched with 80% and nothing less. Thanks to a slack media and a body of conservative politicians looking to pose for a cause, since then its been a one-way street. As Boom and Bijman point out, the 80% scare figure has been kicked around in parliament not only by Christian Democrat and Christian Union MPs but also some of their colleagues from the PvdA and D66. Attempts by the public-health-research Trimbos Institute to question the facts and the motives have not gained much traction in the current Dutch political environment. Meanwhile it has been promoting the European Drug Survey to get a clearer picture of the ‘users’.

By turning it into a major security issue and generating conservative political support, the THG has since then stomped on the (mainly small-scale) marijuana growers across the nation. Supplies to coffeeshops from within the Netherlands have apparently been hit hard – with the effect that the ‘official’ market now needs to be supplied from abroad. As the KRO Reporter documentary showed, the number of plantations in the northern part of Belgium had multiplied in the last couple of years as serious growers move operations south of the border. The Netherlands isn’t exporting the stuff, its importing it.

So while the rest of the world realises a war on drugs is so ’80s’ and out of date, over the past four years the Dutch security state has been gearing up for a new campaign. The Global Commission on Drug Policy‘s report from 2011, that emphasised once again that the best way to deal with the issue is through monitored legalisation, does not get much attention here (and one of the Commission’s members, Richard Branson, was interviewed on Dutch tv a few weeks ago to make this point strongly himself). However, the irony doesn’t stop yet. The Netherlands may not be the source of the stuff, but it is the source of the apparatus needed for the stuff – not least, the seeds. The paraphernalia and seed industry is booming, not surprisingly in nations with high youth unemployment like Spain.

And then there is the fact that since 1999 the Ministry of Health itself has sanctioned a Dutch company to produce medicinal marijuana – for export. The aim was to ensure that patients who used soft drugs to cope with their condition had a regulated supply. Needless to say, the market is booming. As De Pers reported some time ago, Bedrocan, currently the sole supplier for the Ministry’s Bureau Medicinale Cannabis, is now producing around 150 kilos for pharmacies in Italy, Finland, Germany, and Poland. Cannabis is simply one of the best forms of medication for those suffering from problems with the nervous system, Gilles de la Tourette, or even AIDS. The market in the United States has taken off in recent years, with 16 states now allowing for the distribution of medicinal cannabis. It is of course up to the relevant authorities to ensure that the system operates according to legitimate methods – the rest can just take care of itself.

In the past few years Bedrocan has grown into a kind of international consultancy firm, providing advice on the pros and cons of such a public-private-run medicinal cannabis operation to other nations looking to loosen up their rules and take advantage of the benefits. Meanwhile, the Netherlands slides further towards a narrow-minded conservatism. In the real world Economics Minister Maxime Verhagen should be taking up Bedrocan as one of his innovation champions in the Dutch economy. But I guess politically we left the ‘real world’ behind some time in June 2010.

[Thanks to Re-Define]

Max Smeets

Saving the Euro is a tough business. As we have seen, what gets announced as one big step forward usually turns out to be no more than two steps back.

At the beginning of February the European Stability Mechanism treaty (ESM) treaty was signed in Brussels. Looking to secure financial stability, this permanent rescue funding programme will be a powerful instrument. The capital base of the ESM will eventually be filled with 700 billion euros – to provide 500 billion euros in loans – to back up the Eurozone. The Netherlands will contribute around 40 billion euros. 

About two weeks ago Jan Kees de Jager, the Dutch Minister of Finance, wrote in a letter to parliament that “the Dutch government supports the necessary emergency procedures in order to ensure the effectiveness of the ESM.” After claiming that Finland’s constitutional problems with the ESM were resolved, de Jager continues by promoting the ESM’s safeguarding function as a ‘firewall’, in order to prevent other countries from being cast into the flames of financial meltdown.

What the Dutch Minister of Finance conveniently left out of his letter was that building a ‘firewall’ had to mean three things; i) more contributions from Member States, ii) serious leverage for the ESM, and iii) the use of unconventional policies – like especially the US and Japan did before – which basically refers to ‘quantitative easing’. Furthermore, on the website of the European Commission it is stated that “any Euro-area Member State receiving assistance must implement a macro-economic adjustment program and a rigorous analysis of public-debt sustainability, and foresee IMF participation in liaison with the ECB.”

Based on these features the ESM, not surprisingly, has also received a lot of flak, and its coming particularly from the (populist) right.

In Germany, the liberal party FDP and the conservative Bavarian party CSU are against it.  Finland has the populists and the Centre Party opposing it. France has the Front National fighting against it. The strongest government party in Slovakia, Freedom and Solidarity, is rejecting it. Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party is obviously against as well – as he opposes any increase or systematisation of transfer payments from the Netherlands to other EU countries.

In the Netherlands there is another strong voice against the ESM, and this one is more ‘establishment’: The National Auditors (in Dutch ‘de Rekenkamer’). They vigorously oppose the non-transparent and uncontrollable nature of the ESM treaty. As this critique was already expressed after the publication of the draft treaty, some changes were made to the final version, which was signed in February. The most important change that has been implemented is the creation of a European Board of Auditors to oversee the emergency fund.

A letter, sent last week by the Auditors to parliament, indicates however that the main problems are still left untouched. Brussels simply did not respond to the calls for transparency or (external) controllability.

In short, the letter of the Auditors indicates that there are three main worries that need to be resolved. They are deeply unsatisfied with the specifications on “legitimacy”, “compliance”, “effectiveness” and “risk management”. Furthermore, the auditing of the ESM itself is reduced to just one single annual report that will only be available to the Board of Governors. In between nothing can be made public. Hence, in practice this will mean that researchers are unable to see whether the measures were effectively put in place. Finally, the Dutch Auditors argue that there is a lack of international control standards.

In the end, taking steps to increase the power of European institutions to strengthen the Euro is in itself not a bad thing. However, the letter of the Dutch Auditors shows that the way the ESM treaty augments this shift, enhancing power at the expense of democratic controls, is definitely not the way to go. Even notions of ‘financial stabilisation’ or ‘firewall building’ do not justify this move.

[Thanks to Sargasso]

The Dutch parliament is gearing up for a debate this Thursday on the cabinet’s drug policy, which should offer some light relief from the strains of economic recession. But the proposed introduction of the ‘wietpas’ is making this a major political issue, bringing to the fore its underlying ‘empty conservatism’ and how it completely fails to deal with the main issue – criminality. As discussed in earlier HB posts, there is broad opposition towards Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten’s hard-line conservatism on the soft drugs issue, not least from the very people who are supposed to enforce it: the mayors of many of the towns in the south of the Netherlands. Wading into this policy maelstrom today was D66 MP Boris van der Ham, in an interview on nu.nl.

Van der Ham hammers home the point that crunching coffeeshops by restricting their customers to registered members – Dutch only – will only increase the market share of illegal street sellers, particularly for those buyers coming over the border from Belgium and Germany. The illegal dealers also, of course, push harder substances than just cannabis, raising the risk on that front as well. Yet the introduction of the ‘wietpas’ is not accompanied by any extra police or improved resources for addiction clinics.

To ensure that the cannabis supply is well regulated – particularly concerning the levels of TCP, the rising quantaties of which in cannabis has begun to blur the boundary between soft and hard drugs – he also proposes government-sanctioned cannabis production “through which you can demand high health standards and can ensure safe production.” The Netherlands has one of the lowest levels of death from hard drugs, according to van der Ham – no reason to let that slip.

In response to unnecessary meddling in the drug policy from The Hague, Van der Ham proposes a classic move representative of  D 66 politics: decentralisation. “Leave it up to the municipalities to find the best solutions for themselves.”

It will be interesting to see to what extent soft drugs becomes a political issue for those opposing the cabinet’s general conservatist agenda. The parliamentary debate has drawn KRO’s Reporter to air a documentary this coming Thursday evening concerning the export of cannabis from the Netherlands. Once again, as the rest of the world loosens up (double passport, anyone?), the Netherlands clamps down. But maybe there’s a bright side. As De Pers reported it this morning, while the use of cannabis at parties seems to have died out, the chances are that “it could become trendy again if it becomes half-illegal thanks to boring VVD’ers and Christian Democrat policies.”

[Kees Tulleken on Pauw en Witteman: Better stick to brain surgery (thanks to VARA)]

Media ethics – specifically, what the limits are to media efforts to ‘get the story’, or more bluntly, do media ethics exist? – are definitely in vogue as a serious subject these days.The Leveson enquiry in Britain has taken the cover off tabloid culture and shone a bright light into the sordid world of ‘celebrity journalism’, its illegal practices, and its intimate relations with the corrupt forces of ‘law and order’. The News of the World crashed as a result (oh, such a loss!), only for Rupert ‘Ethics? Me?’ Murdoch to revive it with a new Sun on Sunday. Meanwhile the police raids and damages payments continue.

In the Netherlands the ethics issue has recently been brought into the spotlight by one single article, with no phone hacking or bent cops in sight. On Friday 17 February Prince Johan Friso, the youngest son of Queen Beatrix, suffered serious injuries in a skiing accident in Switzerland and was taken to the Intensive Care unit in Innsbruck. With the Dutch media falling over themselves to get a clear picture of the situation, and the RVD (government news service) keeping quiet to avoid any hasty response, the NRC Handelsblad was handed what looked like a scoop. Grabbing it with carefully gloved hands, the issue has instead turned into a bad case of blowback for the paper and its lead-from-the-front chief editor, Peter Vandermeersch.

The article in question was by NRC editor Jannetje Koelewijn, appearing on the front page on Saturday 18 February under the headline ‘How will Prince Friso’s brain maintain its condition?’ In the opinion-page style that has become NRC‘s trademark since Vandermeersch took over, Koelewijn described how on that very Friday afternoon she just happened to be near Innsbruck with her emeritus professor brain specialist (not named in the original article) when they get the news over Friso by phone. Who made the call is not stated (it turned out to be her sister, also a journalist). And before you know it, Koelewijn and hubby are in the intensive care unit discussing the details with the chief surgeon Claudius Thome. ‘Is it true,’ she writes, ‘what the Austrian media have reported: that Johan Friso has a fractured skull?’

This question is the basis for what follows, because Koelewijn uses it to insist that she is being a good journalist by checking the facts. Hubby chums up to Thome and Koelewijn, having announced her role as journalist, is given a few choice details: Friso had not suffered a skull fracture but it was too early to tell what the consequences of his lack of oxygen under the snow (thought to be 20 minutes) would be. By publishing this detail on the Saturday the paper was ahead of any official statements concerning Friso’s condition.

That this single announcement has caused such uproar over the past week says a lot not only about how the Dutch view their royal family but also about how the ethics of the article touched a raw public nerve. On what grounds did Koelewijn, her now-no-longer-anonymous hubby Kees Tulleken, and ultimately Vandermeersch himself decide that they had the right to override the official silence on Friso’s health? Wasn’t this ‘scoop’ little better than the kinds of sensationalist journalism usually associated with Britain’s finest tabloids?

Koelewijn, Tulleken, and Vandermeersch were soon put under the media spotlight to answer these questions in detail, the NRC journalists on the high-profile talk-show De Wereld Draait Door and the surgeon on the equally-influential Pauw en Witteman. Faced with this attention, Koelewijn and Tulleken came across as the kind of arrogant duo you need to avoid at a sub-standard cocktail party. She had already claimed legitimacy for the article by a) saying it was a public service to bring good news out in a period of somberness, and b) effectively saying that she and hubby were ‘the right kind of people’ i.e. Tulleken used to be the neighbour of Friso’s wife Princess Mabel and he had once ‘operated on’ Prince Bernhard. Insiders – intimi – who can be trusted to act in the interests of ‘the family’ and ‘the nation’. In the talk-show spotlight, the potential contradiction between the two claims were gratuitously pushed aside with a (regal?) wave of the hand.

Facing (an avalanche of?) public outcry, Tulleken defended his case in the NRC on Monday 20th by emphasising that he was simply correcting the false news circulating at the time and so “taking the pressure out of the kettle.” On tv Paul Witteman’s several attempts to question why Tulleken thought he had the right to do so were not deemed worthy of an answer. Koelewijn’s approach to this question was even more toe-curling: the royal family are ‘our family’, they belong to and are part of ‘the nation’, and so this kind of news is of immediate public value. In short – they were doing the people a favour. Of course, they never asked ‘our family’ who they know oh so well what they thought about this act of generosity.

They were not the only ones in the firing line. What Thome thought he was doing talking on the record about the intimate condition of a famous patient has rightly received its fair share of criticism. Koelewijn’s declaration in the article that Thome’s unit “have a lot of experience with VIPs” sounds ridiculous in this context – does this guy go around telling details to journalists about everyone he treats?

But its Koelewijn and Tulleken who have to take the flak, because they sought out the information and then published it – only for it to come out, several days later, that it was far from the whole truth. Friso was under the snow for around fifty minutes, had suffered a heart seizure, and was without oxygen for longer than first thought. As a result, he has after all suffered major brain damage. Tulleken’s determination that he was calming everyone down now looks totally misplaced – it was ultimately very bad news.

In contrast to these sad for-the-nation antics of Koelewijn and Tulleken, neither of whom have shown any regrets (far from it – it is everyone else who clearly misses the point of their heroism for ‘the truth’) Vandermeersch has indeed understood some of the meaning of the episode. In a long defence in the NRC of Saturday 25 February (‘NRC, feiten en interpretatie’) he outlined the case and, noteably, distanced himself from Tulleken’s pompous arrogance. No-one wants high-falutin’ professors wandering around hospitals gaining private information to have it released in the press, and then claiming its in the national interest. Realising this, Vandermeersch stated that a medical secret is not a media secret – Thome spoke on the record, so it was at that moment a public fact. Crucially, the chief editor then stated that he should not have gone along with Tulleken’s apparent motive – to act as the national saviour by providing the ‘good news’. He got it wrong.

Its not the paper’s job to go around claiming they speak ‘for the nation’ – only the lower ends of the Murdoch media spectrum do that. Maybe the Queen, it being her son, could decide what, when and where on that point. Vandermeersch knows that all to well, and he made a false call. His reputation rests on having saved the Belgian paper De Standaard by introducing a mix of investigative flair and populist banter, and his attempt to do the same at the NRC had been going well up to this point. This time he’s burnt his fingers good and proper.

[The Bergermeer gas storage site: Thanks to GasopslagBergermeer] 

Max Smeets and Koen Boven’eerdt

In their annual report published  just over a week ago the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA) discussed how the Netherlands is a huge magnet for attracting foreign investment, now more than ever before.

NFIA states that in 2011 there were 193 foreign investment projects with a total investment value of 1,47 bn Euros in the Netherlands. These projects will, in the long term, create 3530 new direct jobs (and 4300 in total). In 2010 and 2009 the amount of foreign investment was ‘only’ 155 million.

The NFIA’s analysis indicates that the distribution of the direct investment projects is not unsurprisingly quite uneven. This is the general interpretation of the mainstream Dutch media – for instance, see the NOS. It indicates that one can find new investment projects mainly in North Holland (Amsterdam), South Holland (Rotterdam), North-Brabant and Limburg, but almost nothing in the Northern part of the country, or in Zeeland.

However, looking at the spread of the investments in terms of Euros instead of new projects did reveal a small surprise. From this perspective the difference is enormous. North Holland has received around 1000 m Euro, followed by North-Brabant and Limburg receiving almost 10 times less. Moreover, the total direct investment of all other provinces together is not even half of the direct investment flowing into North Holland.

In reaction to the report of the NFIA, Henk Bleker, Minister for Foreign Trade & Agriculture, pointed to the oft-mentioned characteristics that give the Netherlands a favourable investment climate: “Companies favour the Netherlands for its position as a stepping stone into Europe, its language and educational skills, as well as its fiscal climate.” Regarding the last item the Netherlands, with a corporate income tax rate of only 25.5%, has the lowest business tax in Western Europe. Furthermore, according to financial services conglomerate KPMG, amongst the European countries included in the survey the Netherlands comes out as the cheapest location overall for foreign companies. Even Japan and the US generate higher costs for foreign business than the Dutch.

Nevertheless, the NFIA report  indicates that the pull for foreign investment to come to the Netherlands is actually increasing. How is this possible? 

First of all, the Netherlands has again benefited greatly from the continuing rise of Asia. More than half (52%) of the 193 projects that the NFIA refers to come from the Asian continent. The countries heavily investing in the Netherlands won’t surprise you; China (29%), Korea (25%), Japan (24%) and Taiwan (11%).

Secondly, the high levels of investment were  also due to some help from the United Arab Emirates. For instance, The UAE energy company TAQA invested  815 m Euros in a gas storage project in Bergermeer (North-Holland). TAQA now owns 60% of the project, the Dutch state taking the remaining 40%.  Via this foreign investment alone, the ‘priority sector’ of Energy accounts for the highest investment amount in 2011.  TAQA is still a relatively small but growing player. Only founded in 2005, its profits have expanded rapidly.  In 2011 TAQA saw its net profit increasing by 66%, to around 230 m Euros, having quadrupled in 2010.

The investment relevance of this Bergermeer project for the Netherlands in general should not be taken too lightly. No doubt, if the Netherlands wants to become the gas hub of Northwest Europe (see previous HB post The Big Dutch Spider in the European Gas Web) this investment is essential. TAQA would like to use the empty Bergermeer site to store gas for the coming decades – in the porous layers of sandstone 2500 meters under the ground.  The enormous extra storage space allows for great flexibility in the Dutch gas infrastructure, which, according to Jan Dirk Bokhoven, Chief Executive Officer of EBN, will also enable further growth of irregular renewable energy sources such as wind energy.

Looking now at these two aspects, it becomes clear that the increase in FDI in the Netherlands is mostly due to developments other than an improved investment climate in the Netherlands. Growing players in other areas of the world seem to be the main reasons behind these very favourable results.

Agata Walczak & Diederik Perk

Last week Wilders’ PVV announced the launching of a web-based hotline to gather complaints against migrants from Middle- and Eastern-Europe, the so-called ‘MOE-landers’. The website reminds everyone that “the PVV was against opening the labour market for Poles and other MOE-landers from the start” for fear of overcrowding, and it welcomes complaints about this community concerning their pollution, noise or drinking behaviour, and general nuisance value. Within a day as many as 14,000 disturbances were reported.

The initiative was immediately met with bewilderment, dismissiveness and mockery. A Polish-Dutch rapper going by the name of Mr. Polska immediately launched his own hotline for positive experiences with migrants from post-communist countries, and a similar initiative ironically singled-out Limburgers, Wilders himself being one of the most prominent individuals from that  southern province.

True to form, Prime-Minister Rutte declined to comment on “matters of party-political concern” (conveniently overlooking the PVV’s support for his governing coalition), but Groen-Links parliamentarian Tofik Dibi tweeted that Wilders had a new scapegoat now that previous ones such as Muslims and Greeks had been worn out.

While Dutch society continued to satirically display the short-sightedness of Wilders’ initiative, the Polish embassy scolded the insulting implications and counter-productiveness of such activities. Even Brussels felt compelled to call on the Dutch not to participate.

However, despite all the public debate, it remains altogether unclear who crossed what lines to bring about this tension. In 2011 alone, the Dutch Complaints Bureau for Discrimination received 230 objections concerning discrimination against MOE-landers, suggesting that the PVV initiative constitutes part of a smear campaign feeding off a discriminatory atmosphere already present in society. Nevertheless, after consulting the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Complaints Bureau concluded that it should not be regarded as illegal.

Geert Wilders is of course aware of Article 137 of the Penal Code on discrimination after recently being acquitted of charges of discrimination and hate speech himself. In that much-publicised trial, the court failed to define the borders between free speech and the right to insult groups in society.

The current controversy exposes a Dutch climate of acceptance for offensive moves singling out minority groups which would not have been tolerated 15-20 years ago. The PVV website collecting complaints about a certain group does not stand up to scrutiny in terms of discrimination. But if the hotline is not discriminatory, then is it a useful instrument to address a real social problem? Yes and no. Yes, it gives a forum for people to vent daily frustrations, but at the same time no, because it ignores their underlying structural causes. The PVV initiative blurs the issues instead of offering a solution in an effort to halt its recent downfall in the polls. The party’s aversion to the EU has been combined with its traditional agenda on migrant issues to create a useful headline-grabbing, social media-based campaign. Wilders and the PVV once again hit the trending topic and go viral.

Meanwhile the real issues get snowed under. There is something to be said for collecting data on the effect migrants willing to work for lower wages have on an economy that is under ongoing pressure, looking in particular at the lower-educated stratum of Dutch people. Cultural background, heavy drinking and poor driving skills should, however, be excluded - there are enough mechanisms already in place to address minor offences.

The fears that have moved the Dutch away from their celebrated tolerance towards minorities are not completely unfounded. The fear of the unknown that comes with the influx of migrants has not disappeared over the past decades after first Turkish and then Moroccan labourers settled in Dutch cities. This time, though, amid the Euro-crisis, the potential consequences are more daunting than ever.

There is a clear discrepancy between two current political objectives. The short-term need is well-known: a sufficient workforce to maintain the pension funds of an ageing society. But recent years have also seen an increase in the retirement age across Europe to mitigate the negative consequences that ageing societies have on economic growth. And if you don’t secure employment for the 60+ers, young migrant workers will be seen as a threat to those facing the prospect of working until 67 (or beyond), not to mention the risk of further inflating the already sizeable social security system. Yet the links are hardly ever made in party-political discourse.

MOE-landers, mostly underpaid and often unregistered, are thus a necessary economic component, but the structural tension between pension age and inflow of migrants is unlikely to be resolved by the government, and daily social tensions are the inevitable result. Meaningful integration is obstructed from the start by short-term employment contracts usually not exceeding 9 months. While the state-funded inburgeringscursus (Civic Integration Course) does not even include such short stays, subsidies will in any case be completely terminated by 2013.

On top of these obstacles to integration, sometimes a conscious effort is made by employers and uncertified uitzendbureaus (work agencies), often in cooperation with insurance companies, to keep the workers isolated and unaware of their rights. Some migrants employed in industries like construction, food production, agriculture or manufacturing are facing conditions that border on modern slavery. Confiscated passports, withheld wages and poor housing are regular (illegal) occurrences that contribute to the alienation of vulnerable groups.   

Against this backdrop, the Polish have no voice to defend themselves against stigmatization. Neither is there a voice in Dutch civil society that would stand up for them in a concerted way. Admittedly, every provocative statement made by Wilders and his party is instantaneously met with uproar from the public. However, in the present case few really represent or sympathize with the difficulties faced by MOE-landers and the underlying reasons for their presence.

So what is the best response? The Netherlands should have learned already that letting issues of migration and integration linger only results in widespread societal discontent. Stigmatization of MOE-landers, and more specifically Polish workers, only exposes them to further discrimination, alienation and exploitation.  It is not only a task for the government to address this, but also for the media and civil society to address the underlying conditions and appreciate the contribution migrants workers make to economic progress. Instead of fearing the construction workers, it’s time to construct the future together.

[Trailer for 'Nederwiet', a documentary on the Dutch soft drugs scene of coffeeshops, illegal growers, and the police, that was shown on Dutch television on Monday 25 April 2011]

With the ‘weed-pass’ coming to the southern Dutch provinces on 1 May, another notorious case in the decline of Dutch soft drug tolerance resurfaced last thursday. The long-running saga surrounding the closed coffeshop Checkpoint in Terneuzen took another twist. In a surprising decision considering the current conservative turn in the Netherlands, a court in The Hague has decided that the former owner of Checkpoint, Meddie Willemsen, should be free from prosecution.

The Bureau covered the crazy story of the rise and demise of Checkpoint back in March 2010 (Exit Checkpoint -Exit Dutch Soft Drug Policy?), following the judgement by the Middelburg court that even though the coffeeshop represented a ‘criminal organisation’ neither the owner nor sixteen of his employees should go to jail. Why not? Simply because the booming marijuana business had been fully supported by the local council and police force – it was literally a huge tourist-puller and cash-cow (+/-2500 customers a day) for the otherwise rather dismal town of Terneuzen lying under the shadow of Dow Chemical’s biggest European plant.

The state prosecutor’s office wasn’t satisfied with the outcome and began to plot a case against Willemsen and his employees, despite the obvious message from Middelburg that while this was technically possible it would in reality open a huge can of worms. It looked like Checkpoint was being set up as a scapegoat to send a message to all other coffeshops – If you transgress the law on holding more than 500 grams of marijuana we’ll come down on you hard (Checkpoint had in total 160 kilos when it was raided). And a message to the local councils – don’t get too supportive of the local drugs business. Another nail in the coffin for Dutch soft drug tolerance.

Only they’ve picked the wrong case – as the judges in The Hague have said, this one literally doesn’t stand up in court. The level of cooperation that Willemsen had received from the authorities before the bust had strongly suggested that he was beyond the long arm of the law. The fact that this relationship was reversed without warning has fundamentally undermined the prosecution’s argument.

While the Checkpoint case continues in the background, a much bigger issue that will fundamentally transform the soft drug landscape is fast approaching – the weed-pass or wietpas. The most interesting thing about the pass, which will restrict each coffeeshop to 2000 registered customers living in the immediate area, is that it is being introduced against strong opposition from the municipal authorities in those same southern provinces. A superb review of the coming the law in De Groene Amsterdammer last November made clear that just as there was serious movement for an experimental legalisation of marijuana cultivation in Brabant, Minister of Justice Ivo Opstelten torpedoed it with his plan for a more severe clamp-down. Support for legalisation had come from among others Eindhoven mayor Rob van Gijzel, who saw a rise in violent criminal activity surrounding the illegal drugs business. In these circumstances the idea of weakening the law to deal with criminality was not on Opstelten’s mind. Conservative Netherlands was on the rise.

The stupid thing is, the wietpas is not going to deal with the very problem that the southern provinces want to deal with – the free-wheeling drugs gangs. Coffeeshops are no longer seen as a problem for most of the local authorities across Brabant and Limburg, and they literally fear that the introduction of the wietpas will make criminality increase as much of the trade switches to the streets. Belgians, French and Germans, excluded from the coffeeshops due to the residency restrictions for the pass, will be forced to look elsewhere for their supply. The end result is therefore a law that discriminates against foreigners, will produce more crime, and force any well-meaning Dutch dope-smoker to be registered with the state – becoming a semi-criminal in the process.

Understandably the level of criticism has been high, but the sources of much of the criticism has been very interesting. Next to Rob van Gijzel came Thom de Graaf, former leader of D 66 and now mayor of Nijmegen, who pointed out last December that it is up to the mayors themselves how they interpret the law on coffeeshop tolerance. The Hague can’t tell the mayors what to do, whatever Opstelten thinks. Then there was Hans van Duijn, former chairman of the Netherlandse Politiebond (police union), who argued around the same time that the best way to deal with the drugs-crime link was exactly to open more coffeeshops to squeeze the street trade.

So far, all to no avail. On 15 December Opstelten announced that an immediate introduction of the wietpas was not wise, and Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg now have until 1 May to prepare. The rest of the country will follow on 1 January 2013. No doubt there will be more twists to the story in the months to come.