This was the most boring week in Dutch history
We're waiting
Nothing happened in the Netherlands last week. (Effectively nothing.) It’s a school break and parliament is in recess. It might as well be have been third week of August. The only interesting Dutch news item actually came out of America: President Biden now supports outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for head of NATO. I wrote about Europe’s sudden struggle with NATO last week.
There is a sense now, beyond the holidays, that everything is on hold. Rutte might become head NATO. If he does, who will be caretaker prime minster until a new government is formed? It’s not clear. We might have one of several different esoteric types of governments once a cabinet is formed. The far-right PVV party leader Geert Wilders might be in charge.
The economy shows very slow signs recovery. Storm Louis, the sixth storm of the year, damaged a couple of trees. The government will not finish distributing compensation to the possibly 68,000 victims of the disastrous benefits affair—which began in 2005—until the end of 2026.
“It’s up to the Americans,” Mark Rutte said at the Munich Security Conference last week, regarding Trump’s opposition to NATO. “I’m not an American, I cannot vote in the U.S. We have to work with whoever is on the dance floor.”
We won’t know whether Biden or Trump is on the so-called American dance floor until November. There’s a chance the far right could come to power in the European Parliament, but those elections aren’t until June.
We are waiting. We are waiting on NATO and America and EU elections. We are waiting due to the bizarre structure of our political system—it took 299 days the last time they had to form a cabinet and there are fifteen parties in parliament. We are waiting for our massive bureaucracy, hampered by years of neoliberal policy designed to slow things down, to get things done.
We are waiting for it to stop raining.
I have no analysis of this other than to say: it seems boring because it is.
“After exactly six weeks, the mystery is solved,” began an enticing article in the NRC last Thursday, which I read just I was getting really desperate for something to write about. “Ernst Kuipers’ new job is in Singapore.”
The former Minister of Health. He resigned in January? People were mad because he didn’t say where he was going when he quit?
Where does the yawn end and the scream begin?
Fijne vakantie till next week. A verdict in the Marengo drug trail, one of the biggest criminal trials in Dutch history, is expected on Tuesday. So that’s something.
🔥 Hot Linkjes
Society
Riots broke out between rival Eritrean groups in the Hague last weekend. These were only the latest to pop up across Europe recently, and reflect deep divisions in the Eritrean diaspora—between those loyal and opposed to the repressive regime of President Isaias Afwerki. (Washington Post)
Two workers, one from Belgium and the other from Poland, died when a bridge under construction in Lochem collapsed. (Adam Durbin / BBC)
Politics
Some crazy Dutch bullshit made Fox News! Surprise, surprise, it’s Geert Wilders calling the Netherlands “Europe’s fool” for taking in Ukrainian refugees. For a palate-cleansing human perspective on the topic, check out the short documentary Ukrainians In Exile by Janek Ambros for the Nation.
Arts
The Netherlands will open a national slavery museum in Amsterdam in 2030. Mark Rutte announced funding for the museum as part of the state apology for slavery in 2022. (Senay Boztas / Art Newspaper)
Sport
Femke Bol broke her 400-meter indoor world record, finishing in 49.24 seconds. She shaved two-hundredths of a second off the record she set a year ago. (ESPN)
🥳 Leuke Dingetjes
Dutch TV Biologist Freek Vonk was among a group of fourteen other scientists to discover a new species of green anaconda. It is very large.
An old single from Shocking Blue
I had no idea that Bananarama’s 1986 hit “Venus” (which I have heard a billion times) was a cover of a 1969 song from Dutch band Shocking Blue, h/t to Jim Clash in Forbes.
*all typos in this post are on purpose