No conclusions or rights can be attached to this column. I am now going to write paragraphs and if you think after reading you know what I want or think, then you are completely wrong. This column has no formal status.
The ‘disclaimer’ of the VVD and CDA at the top of the left in the train by Gert-Jan Segers and by de Volkskrant published formation document made me laugh: no rights, no conclusions, no formal status. This way you can write everything down without actually writing it down. Just as surprising as the ‘non-papers’ that civil servants sometimes draft: according to Wikipedia, these are unofficial documents that are used as discussion papers.
Anyway, the disclaimer of VVD and CDA above their formation document was quite understandable: the piece was intended as a lure to bring D66 back to the negotiating table of a minority government in September. The formation was then rock solid. CDA and VVD therefore empathized with the wishes of D66, and included them in their piece. Not something negotiators normally venture into.
The CDA-VVD climate passage a progressive guideline? That’s not too bad
So no conclusions can be drawn from this, but I’m going to do that now. I feel starved after eight months of non-forming: I eagerly eat every bit of policy thrown at me. I pick up two surprises from this week’s CDA-VVD piece and the earlier start of a coalition agreement between VVD and D66.
One: childcare could become much cheaper. Not only because D66 wants it, but also to abolish the childcare allowance. I am very curious how much money the four parties are willing to spend on it. That determines how cheap the shelter will be. Because it costs something. The D66 election plan for four days of free care (including after-school) for working and non-working people structurally cost 9.3 billion euros per year. calculated the Central Planning Bureau.
Two: in the piece, VVD and CDA want to go further than Europe when it comes to climate policy. They want to raise the Dutch target for 2030 to 55 percent (less greenhouse gas). That while the European target of 55 percent would probably have meant a lower target for the Netherlands: about 52 percent.
The climate passage in the VVD-CDA piece was interpreted this week as a progressive handout from the VVD. But that’s okay. Because the two parties want to “realize in the industry” the extra task that 55 percent means. Via green industrial policy, and tailor-made agreements with the 20 largest emitters in the Netherlands: industrial companies such as Tata, Shell, Dow, Yara. Well, VVD and CDA have been advocating this for months. That costs a lot of money, I hear amounts above 15 billion euros: for subsidies and infrastructure. The plan is completely in line with the VVD and CDA.
Bernard Wientjes is now foreman of the chemical industry. At the beginning of October, he said in a discussion with MPs that the customized agreements are very similar to the bonus-malus scheme that the industry also advocated in 2019 during the Climate Agreement. That plan was eventually scrapped after some criticism. There was a CO2levy instead, which the then VVD minister Eric Wiebes, like the industry, was very much against.
So a guide? Rather an old wish in a new guise.
Marike Stellinga is an economist and political reporter. She writes about politics and economics here every week.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 20 November 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of November 20, 2021
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