Do you still understand today’s world? Or are you confused like I am?
As an author I have to keep tabs on the daily news, just to keep in touch with what is happening around the world. But I’d rather avoid the news like many others I speak with - most of it is depressing and infuriating.
The Vienna Congress
The indecision and political backstabbing in The Hague and Brussels makes me think of the Vienna Congress of 1814-1815, where two centuries ago protracted negotiation took place on Europe’s future, following Napoleon’s demise in 1813. ‘The Congress dances, but does not progress,’ complained a diplomat from Hainaut in the (then) Southern Netherlands, Charles de Ligne, in desperation over all the diplomatic ballroom parties and the lack of result. Only after Napoleon managed to escape Elba in February 1815 and grabbed power in France once again before meeting his match at Waterloo, the Vienna Congress woke up and finally managed to make decisions.
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| The Vienna Congress dances. Source: Wikipedia |
The Hungarian disease
Our own version of the Vienna Congress - our Parliament in The Hague - is in summer recess till September. In great haste, following a week of crisis and some clever copy-paste work, in the small hours of morning before their holiday, they recently managed to pass a few anti-asylum laws through Parliament. These were originally devised by the recently ousted far-right Asylum Minister, mrs Faber. If the Upper Chamber of Parliament (equal to the UK House of Lords) passes this law in September, undocumented persons will be punishable, and even giving them humanitairan aid such as handing them a sandwich, or dropping a few euros into a beggar’s hand may cause the police to knock at your door.
These are Hungarian style contrivances, undoubtedly related to the close friendship between the far-right PVV party leader Wilders and the Hungarian Prime Minister mr Orbán, who pioneered this kind of policy within the EU. And no doubt this will immediately solve our self-proclaimed asylum crisis. The National Police’s Chief Constable already condemned the plan as being unworkable.
Democracy at death’s door?
Meanwhile, all the headaches remain. Nitrogen deposit, housing, asylum, climate, environment, farming, health care, education, transport, defence. They are the legacy of decades of enlightened rule by our previous PM Mark Rutte and his predecessor, who let everything run to seed. A former top civil servant recently said that in this century, nothing remarkable had been achieved by successive Dutch governments.
During the past years we already had two General Elections. With the present Cabinet sent off, the third election is due FIVE months from now due to our antiquated election rules and the summer recess intervening, so by the time it takes place, everyone will conveniently have forgotten who toppled the Government and on what pretext, and more campaign lies will clutter the TV talkshows. Someone (I forgot who) recently said that democracy doesn’t suffer sudden death, it slowly and painfully passes away, month after month.
Another tidbit of news, quickly forgotten, was the initiative to create a Constitutional Court being shelved. The Netherlands is the only EU country that doesn’t have such an institute to check new laws against the Constitution. The millions reserved to create such a Court were diverted to the Prison Service, of all things. Evidently that’s considered more important than cross-checking hastily conceived laws.
As former American President Dwight D Eisenhower once remarked: urgent matters are often hardly important, but important matters hardly urgent.
Putin, Netanyahu, Trump and the ayatollahs
Let’s now consider our foreign policy, which condemns Putin’s bombs targeting civilians, but looks away from Netanyahu doing the same. The lack of sanctions against the killing of defenceless women and children in Gaza is mind-boggling. Words, mealy-mouthed words despite the clear majority of the Dutch population being in favour of sanctions against the Netanyahu regime, and the gigantic Red Line demonstrations in The Hague where over a hundred thousand people twice showed their horror at what is being perpetrated in that unfortunate strip of land.
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| The Red Line demonstrations in The Hague |
The NATO summit
Instead we received Trump and his acolytes with all honours in The Hague. The same Mark Rutte who led our country into slow decline, kissed the feet of the erratic real estate dealer in the White House, calling him ‘Daddy’, for crying out loud, to keep him on board and save NATO. Donald, who snuggles up to Vladimir, keeps Ukraine dangling on a string, and de-stabilises the Middle East by bombing the Iranian ayatollahs and allowing Netanyahu a free hand in Gaza. With such friends, who needs enemies? Brrr.
The Brussels death dance
The EU version of the Vienna Congress resides in Brussels, where it dances with death. Death of others, to be certain: migrants in the Libyan desert and women and children in Gaza. Brussels has turned words into the main product of a lucrative lobbycracy. How long did it take this spring to decide about European defence, because Trump proved to be an unreliable partner of Europe?
And how long did it take them to reply to the half-hearted request of our Foreign Minister, mr Veldkamp, to determine whether the Association Treaty between the EU and Israel should be cancelled? The reply was frustrated by Germany, which suffers from the ancestral sin of Auschwitz, Dachau and Sobibor, and by (predictably) the odd man out: Hungary. The Association Treaty will not be cancelled until further notice. They will talk about it once again on July 15. I hope.
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| Destroyed land. Source: UNRWA |
Mr Veldkamp now at long last considers Dutch measures against Israel. But what kind of measures? He hadn’t yet thought about concrete steps, he admitted on July 2, which says it all. The commercial and political implications are huge, and Parliament is in recess, which buys him time. A two month holiday for the tender souls of our elected representatives, whilst the children of Gaza are being killed.
History will judge us all, I’m afraid.
