Americans vote in midterm elections on Tuesday. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate are contested. President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party is projected to lose its majority in at least one and possibly both chambers of Congress.
This guide explains how the elections work, why Republicans are up in the polls, why Democrats may yet defend their majority in the Senate, and which states will decide the outcome. (more…)
The Netherlands has a housing shortage of 300,000. The government’s ambition is to build 100,000 homes per year to keep up with population growth (which is entirely driven by immigration), but there is doubt it will meet this goal.
75,000 homes were built last year. Only 33,000 building permits were issued in the first half of 2022.
For a story in Wynia’s Week, I asked builders, developers, the construction lobby, economists and housing corporations why the going is so slow. They gave me ten reasons.
Some are Netherlands-specific. Provincial governments, which must parcel in building locations, underestimated population growth. Municipalities, which issue building permits, are understaffed. Judges won’t approve permits if construction causes nitrogen pollution and emissions from farms and industry aren’t reduced. (More on the Netherlands’ farm and nitrogen crisis here.)
Others are hopefully temporary: high prices of fuel, steel and wood caused by the war in Ukraine.
The remaining four explanations are relevant to other countries. (more…)
Italians vote in early elections on September 25. All 400 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 200 elected seats in the Senate will be contested.
The elections were called after Prime Minister Mario Draghi lost the confidence of the populist and right-wing parties in his coalition. Polls predict a victory for the right.
Here is everything you need to know. (more…)
European countries spent €280 billion on subsidies and tax cuts in the last year to help businesses and households pay their energy bills.
It may not be enough.
Prices surged when Russia expanded its war in Ukraine in February and European states agreed to reduce their imports of Russian natural gas. The EU as a whole got 40 percent of its gas from Russia in previous years. That is down to 20 percent.
But there are more factors pushing up electricity and gas prices. Here is an overview, including what governments have done to ameliorate the effects. (more…)
Mario Draghi is on his way out.
The former European Central Bank chief, prime minister of Italy for eighteen months, failed on Thursday to keep his coalition together. The populist-left Five Star Movement and right-wing League and Forza Italia boycotted a confidence vote in parliament.
Draghi’s resignation could trigger an early election in the autumn, which would push passage of the 2023 budget, including measures to help businesses and families cope with inflation, to next year.
It also puts a six-year, €221-billion investment and reform program at risk that’s funded by the EU. (I analyzed the plan here.) Right-wing opponents are polling in first place. (more…)
One in three Dutch farms may need to close. It’s the most painful consequence of the government’s plan to cut nitrogen emissions in half by 2030.
The farmers’ lobby is furious, calling the plan “unrealistic” and an attack on the countryside. Pro-farmer parties have gained in the polls at the expense of the ruling Christian Democrats and liberals.
Provincial deputies, who would need to decide on a case-by-case basis which farms can stay and which need to go, fear a backlash in regional elections in March. That would also put Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s majority at risk. Provincial deputies elect the Senate in May.
Rutte’s center-right VVD (of which I am a member), is split down the middle. 51 percent of members who attended the annual party congress on Saturday voted for a motion to soften the farm policy.
The cabinet minister responsible for it, Christianne van der Wal — who is of our party, but who answers to parliament, not the party — told a reporter on Sunday she has little wiggle room. “I’m always open to good ideas,” she said. “But the targets are crystal clear.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Rutte — who has been in power for twelve years — called the nitrogen crisis the biggest of his political career. Yet there has been little coverage of it internationally. I suspect the reason is that Dutch media tend to emphasize reduction targets that are the result of judicial rulings, which gives foreign correspondents the impression that this is a Netherlands-only problem. But when you take a step back from nitrogen pollution and look at the impact of agriculture altogether, the Dutch is not an isolated case at all. It looks more like a preview of the future of intensive animal farming globally, if intensive animal farming has a future at all.
I’ll do my best to explain both the narrow issue of nitrogen pollution and the broader story of animal farming. Along the way, I’ll review the arguments farmers have made against reductions and I’ll end with the political implications for Rutte’s coalition. (more…)
At least 54 British Conservatives want Boris Johnson to go. That was the minimum — 15 percent of lawmakers — needed to trigger a vote of confidence. The prime minister needs to convince a majority of 180 of his colleagues to keep him in office. The vote will be held tonight.
The immediate cause of the rebellion is an investigation that found Johnson broke COVID-19 lockdown rules by attending and hosting multiple parties and other social events in 10 Downing Street, his London residence, through 2020 and 2021.
Other reasons given by Johnson’s internal critics to push him out are: raising taxes on energy companies, when Conservatives are supposed to be the party of low taxes; sending asylum seekers to Rwanda while their applications are being processed in the UK; and threatening to pull out of an agreement with the EU that has kept the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland open.
Not only did the prime minister break the rules; he repeatedly breaks his word. (more…)
The Dutch government is raising defense spending to nearly €20 billion in order to meet NATO’s 2-percent target.
The ruling four-party coalition (which includes my own liberal party) increased military spending from €12 to €14 billion prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is adding another €15 billion over the next three years, which should be enough to reach 2 percent of GDP by the time of the next election in 2025.
Per capita, this would make the Netherlands the largest military spender in the EU. In Europe, only the British spend more.
It is a turnaround for a country that only ten years ago sold almost all its artillery, frigates and tanks. (more…)
Dutch immigration authorities are desperate. Asylum applications have nearly doubled in the last year, to 4,200 in March and 3,200 in April. There are currently 40,000 asylum seekers in shelters, which is up from 26,000 a year ago.
There are plenty of stories about the consequences: asylum seekers sleeping on floors and in tents, local governments furnishing emergency shelters. (Here is a good one from de Volkskrant.)
There has been less analysis of the causes. I looked into the numbers, and spoke with experts, for Wynia’s Week. You can find the full story in Dutch here. What follows is a summary in English. (more…)
Emmanuel Macron may yet hold on to his majority in the National Assembly. His liberal alliance, renamed Ensemble (Together), won 350 out of 577 seats in 2017. Polls give it between 310 and 378 seats for the elections in June.
Based on their strong performance in last year’s regional elections, and given that Macron’s party has weak grassroots, I expected the center-right Republicans to do better. They still might. Republican voters, who on average are older than Macron’s, are more likely to turn out. But their disappointing performance in the presidential election — Valérie Pécresse got just 5 percent support — may also have demotivated conservatives.
The alliance of the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, left-wing Greens and center-left Socialists — who failed to unite in the presidential election and lost — has a third of French voters, but it could struggle in the decisive second voting rounds. Left-wing candidates would do best against a conservative or far-right opponent. Then they could count on the support of centrists. But where a left-wing candidate qualified against a Macronist, the latter would be preferable to Republicans.
The same dynamic works against the far-right Marine Le Pen. If a candidate of her National Rally makes the runoff, left to moderate-right voters tend to back their opponent.
The two-round voting system makes it difficult to predict the outcome altogether. Divided government, what the French call cohabitation, in which the presidency and National Assembly are held by different parties, is possible.
So how does that work in France? (more…)
A year ago, I wrote that the child benefits Joe Biden snuck into his $1.9 trillion coronavirus recovery program might outlive the pandemic. Once American parents had accustomed to receiving monthly cheques of $250 or $300 per child, I figured it would be hard for Congress to let the program lapse.
But that’s what they did. (more…)
France’s divisions haven’t healed. Like five years ago, Emmanuel Macron, the candidate of the cities, the optimists, the outward-looking and the university-educated, faces Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the small towns, the worried, the inward-looking and the working class, in the second and final voting round of the presidential election.
The surprise of the first round was Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strong third-place finish with 22 percent support, behind Le Pen’s 23 percent and Macron’s 28.
Rather than a country split in two, France turns out to have three political blocs of almost equal size.
This is a throwback to earlier times. Historian Sudhir Hazareesingh writes that France had three political families until Charles de Gaulle replaced proportional representation with a two-round voting system in 1958 that encouraged the formation of two parties. The center-right united into what is now the Republican party. The Communists were eclipsed by the Socialists on the left. (more…)
The first round of the French presidential election will be held on Sunday. Assuming no candidate wins a majority, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff on April 24.
Polls predict incumbent president Emmanuel Macron will place first in the opening round and win the second round, but the far-right Marine Le Pen and far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon aren’t far behind.
Here is everything you need to know. (more…)
Twelve candidates have qualified to compete in the French presidential election. Only six are polling at more than few percentage points. I will summarize their policies here, plus those of Anne Hidalgo. The mayor of Paris has just 2 percent support in recent surveys, but her Socialist Party could still be a force in the legislative elections in June.
The comparison reveals strange bedfellows. The centrist Emmanuel Macron and center-right Valérie Pécresse see eye to eye on asylum and pension reform. Macron’s climate policies are closer to the Green party’s candidate, Yannick Jadot. Jadot and the far-right Marine Le Pen emphasize animal welfare. Le Pen and the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon agree on renationalizing motorways. Mélenchon and the far-right Éric Zemmour believe NATO is obsolete.
(more…)
Emmanuel Macron is projected to place first in the opening round of the French presidential election in two weeks, which would make him the favorite for the runoff another two weeks later.
Macron has been in power since 2017 and is only the second of eight presidents who didn’t come from the Gaullist right or the Socialist left. “Liberal” is a dirty word in France, synonymous with Anglo-American capitalism, so Macron calls himself a “centrist” and a “progressive”. But he has governed as a liberal.
Here is an overview of his successes and failures. (more…)
