Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte is received by Jan Peumans, the speakers of the Flemish parliament, in Brussels, October 15, 2015 (Vlaams Parlement)
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, may have little choice but to ally with the left-wing Labor Party and Greens after next week’s provincial elections, even if his own and competing right-wing parties make gains.
Rutte’s liberal VVD (of which I am a member) is up in the polls, as is Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) and the new Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB).
JA21, a conservative offshoot of the far-right Forum for Democracy, would also win seats.
Their views on climate, farm and immigration policy could make it hard for Rutte to do deals with right-wing senators, who are elected by provincial deputies in May. (more…)
Jan Huitema, a member of the European Parliament for the Dutch liberal party, answers questions from reporters in Brussels, October 28, 2022 (European Parliament/Philippe Buissin)
German liberals have thrown a wrench in the EU’s plan to phase out diesel and petrol cars, arguing a 2035 deadline is too strict.
“It is contradictory when the EU Commission calls for high climate protection targets on the one hand, but on the other hand makes it more difficult to achieve these targets through overambitious regulation,” transport minister Volker Wissing told the Bundestag on Friday.
A vote of EU transport ministers planned for Tuesday has been postponed. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is attending a German cabinet meeting on Sunday to discuss their about-face.
Wissing’s change of heart is a stab in the back of fellow liberal Jan Huitema, who steered the car legislation through the European Parliament. Wissing’s FDP and Huitema’s VVD are the fourth- and fifth-largest parties in the Renew group. (more…)
Elly Schlein, a member of the European Parliament for Italy, answers questions from reporters in Strasbourg, December 12, 2018 (European Parliament/Fred Marvaux)
When Italy’s Democratic Party lost the election in September, I told Newsweek they had made a mistake running on abortion, LGBT and immigration rights:
That helped the right more than it helped the left. Social justice resonates with university-educated Italians in big cities like Bologna and Florence. It doesn’t convince the garbage collector in Naples or the unemployed single mother in Palermo that the left has their interests at heart.
American president Joe Biden visits Customs and Border Protection in El Paso, Texas, January 8 (White House/Adam Schultz)
Immigrants who enter the United States illegally may soon be disqualified from applying for asylum.
President Joe Biden proposed the change after a record illegal border crossings were counted in the fiscal year that ended in September: 2.4 million, up from 1.7 million a year earlier.
By refusing asylum to some immigrants altogether, Biden would go further than his Republican predecessor. Donald Trump returned applicants to Mexico, where they had to wait for months or even years while their asylum request was reviewed.
Biden would also speed up deportations of illegal aliens who have not applied for asylum.
Unlike Trump, the Democrat is at the same time making it easier for specific groups of refugees to come to America. (more…)
Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, speaks with Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands in Prague, Czech Republic, October 7, 2022 (European Council)
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte is arguing for stricter European asylum rules and finding a listening ear in Brussels.
“What you see is that everyone fell asleep a little during corona,” he said after meeting with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, whose proposals match his own. “At the time, the asylum figures were very low.”
An increase in applications after COVID overwhelmed the Dutch immigration system. Several hundred asylum seekers had to camp and sleep outside the application center in Ter Apel, where there weren’t enough beds free. (more…)
French president Emmanuel Macron listens to European Council president Ursula von der Leyen during a summit in Prague, Czech Republic, October 6, 2022 (European Council)
77 percent of all state aid approved in the EU last year went to French and German companies, according to figures from the European Commission.
The two countries, which have 40 percent of the European economy between them, benefited from a suspension of antitrust rules first put in place during COVID-19.
France would make the suspension permanent. Two years ago, the European Commission rejected such a French proposal. Now it is more sympathetic.
I have a story in the Netherlands’ Wynia’s Week about what France wants, why the European Commission changed its mind, and how France and Germany were able to take advantage of exemptions to the rules of the single market. Here is a summary for English readers. (more…)
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez speaks at a congress of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in Huesca, October 1, 2019 (PSOE/Eva Ercolanese)
The constitutional crisis triggered by Spain’s highest court a week before New Year’s has ended with a whimper.
The Constitutional Court suspended a debate in parliament for the first time since the end of the dictatorship. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez spoke of “an unprecedented situation in our democracy.”
At stake were reforms of the Constitutional Court itself. Sánchez’ left-wing coalition had proposed to lower the threshold needed to appoint justices from three-fifths to a simple majority in order to override a veto by the conservative People’s Party.
A majority in Congress, the Spanish lower house, approved the reforms. The People’s Party then asked the court to stop a debate in the Senate, arguing the changes were improperly introduced: as an amendment to penal reforms rather than a separate law. The six justices appointed by the People’s Party, including two whose terms had expired and who refused to recuse themselves, agreed this technicality warranted an historic breach of the separation of powers. The five appointed by Sánchez’ Socialist Workers’ Party sided with the government.
It was a new low in the politicization of the Spanish judiciary. After Sánchez became prime minister in 2018, a minority of conservative lawmakers blocked every judicial appointment they could. Their hope was to overturn the social democrat’s liberalizations, including the legalization of euthanasia and recognition of transgenders, and prevent the Constitutional Court from changing hands before the election in December.
Conservatives finally relented, and agreed to confirm three progressive judges, in order to avoid a permanent lowering of the required majority. That means Sánchez’ other reforms are probably safe. (more…)
French president Emmanuel Macron confers with his staff in the Elysée Palace in Paris, February 5, 2020 (Elysée/Soazig de la Moissonniere)
Emmanuel Macron’s government has proposed to raise the French pension age from 62 to 64 and abolish early retirement in the public sector.
Pension reform was one of the reasons I endorsed Macron for a second term. French pensions are among the most generous in the world, yet Macron’s predecessors balked at raising the retirement age for fear of protests.
I have an op-ed in EUobserver arguing Macron is doing the right thing. I will summarize my arguments here and also give the arguments against reform. (more…)
Dairy cows in the Netherlands, September 28, 2016 (Sebastiaan ter Burg)
Dutch agriculture minister Piet Adema is spending €26 million in 2023 and 2024 to speed up the transition to organic farming.
The money falls short of the €35 million per year Dutch farm lobby LTO had asked for. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the €1 billion in national and EU subsidies Dutch farmers receive each year, half of which goes to the production of dairy and meat.
Adema would funnel 6 percent of EU subsidies into organic farming. Its share is meant to rise from 4 to 15 percent by 2030, when the European Commission’s goal is to have 25 percent organic farming EU-wide. (more…)
Constitutional Court in Madrid, Spain at night (Europa Press)
Conservatives have plunged Spain into what Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez describes as “an unprecedented situation in our democracy” and Catalonia’s El Nacional calls “the biggest institutional challenge between powers in Spain since the attempted coup d’état of 1981.”
“You have silenced parliament,” Sánchez told opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Wednesday, who convinced a majority of the Constitutional Court’s justices to block a Senate debate about reforms that would allow Sánchez to replace four of them.
The six justices in the majority were all appointed by Feijóo’s People’s Party. The five progressive justices sided with Sánchez, a social democrat.
According to Germany’s Die Zeit, it is the first time since the return of democracy to Spain that the Constitutional Court has intervened in the legislative process.
Opposition has blocked Sánchez’ nominees
Since Sánchez became prime minister in 2018, the right-wing opposition has vetoed all his judicial nominations, which require supermajorities in both chambers of parliament.
In an attempt to break the deadlock, Sánchez proposed to reduce the required majority for Constitutional Court appointments down from three-fifths.
The proposal passed the lower house with the support of left-wing and Basque and Catalan separatist parties.
The same coalition abolished the crimes for which Catalonia’s leading separatists were prosecuted when the People’s Party was last in power. Sánchez had already pardoned those found guilty of sedition and misuse of public funds by organizing an independence referendum in defiance of the Constitutional Court.
Feijóo on Wednesday accused Sánchez of “perfecting his obedience to the Catalan independence movement.”
Conservatives are alarmed
Catalan nationalism has become the primary motivator of the Spanish right. Whereas Sánchez hopes concessions to the Catalans will convince a majority to remain in Spain, conservatives smell treason and believe the only way to prevent Catalan secession is to crack down.
Conservatives are also alarmed by Sánchez’ expansion of abortion rights, legalization of euthanasia and recognition of transgenders. Some cling to the hope that the Constitutional Court might overturn those reforms.
Judges refuse to recuse
The right may be able to outsmart Sánchez for another year, when elections are due. Polls predict a People’s Party victory. To many Spanish voters, concessions to Catalans are worse than a judicial power grab.
That would require four justices — three conservatives, one progressive — to remain in office for another year. Their mandates expired in June.
The government had asked those justices whose mandates were affected by the reforms to recuse themselves from hearing Feijóo’s challenge but they refused, in effect extending their terms to vote against their replacement.
Bartender in Siena, Italy, August 5, 2020 (Unsplash/Gabriella Clare Marino)
Italy’s new right-wing government has backed away from a plan to let shops refuse card payments under €60.
The country’s previous government, led by former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, required companies to accept all card payments in an attempt to fight tax evasion. Businesses that refused were fined €30 per transaction plus 4 percent of the amount.
The policy was one of the EU’s conditions for releasing COVID-19 recovery funds, of which Italy is the largest recipient. (more…)
Application center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel, the Netherlands (IND)
Europe is the throes of another asylum crisis. The 27 countries of the EU plus Norway and Switzerland, which have open borders with the bloc, received some 98,000 asylum applications in September, the most in six years. Figures for the first nine months of 2022 suggest that most, and possibly all, member states will match the records of 2015, when 1.3 million people applied for asylum in the EU.
Some 548,000 asylum seekers are waiting for a decision on whether they can stay.
The figures include few Ukrainians, who can remain in the EU for up to three years without applying for asylum.
I’ll take a deep dive into the numbers before looking at how three member states are coping with the high influx: France, Italy and Netherlands. (more…)
The sun rises over the Gran Vía of Madrid, Spain (Unsplash/Arw Zero)
So politicians understand how prices work after all.
Spain, Germany and the Netherlands are capping prices of electricity and heating for consumers. Energy providers are still paying high prices for oil and record prices for natural gas due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, so governments will make up the difference.
The price energy providers charge is based on their costs plus a profit. If they can’t pass higher costs on to consumers, they would either have to cut their own costs, for example by laying off staff; scale up, which isn’t easy in Europe’s heavily regulated energy market; or fail.
Somehow that logic is lost on many when it comes to housing. The same three countries have capped, or are capping, rents, but there is no compensation for landlords. Nor for developers, who can sell fewer rental apartments.
Landlords make up the difference by underinvesting in maintenance. Developments simply don’t happen.
Which are then used as arguments for even more regulation. (more…)
Republican governor Ron DeSantis of Florida speaks at the Student Action Summit in Tampa, July 22 (Gage Skidmore)
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has become former president Donald Trump’s most likely rival for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024.
DeSantis won reelection with almost 60 percent support on Tuesday, up from 50 percent in 2018 and by the widest margin in a Florida gubernatorial election in forty years.
Florida’s members of Congress benefited. Senator Marco Rubio was reelected with 58 percent support, up from 52 percent in 2016. Florida Republicans gained three seats in the House of Representatives.
Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States could have gone worse for Democrats.
Many states are still counting their votes, but early results suggest Republicans underperformed.
371 of the 435 elections for the House of Representatives have been called: 172 for Democrats and 199 for Republicans. Democrats are still expected to lose their majority of 220 seats.
In the Senate, where 35 out of 100 seats are contested, the parties may swap Pennsylvania and Nevada but keep fifty seats each, which would give Vice President Kamala Harris the deciding vote.
Democrat John Fetterman is projected to win outgoing Republican senator Pat Toomey’s seat in Pennsylvania, defeating Mehmet Oz. Republican challenger Adam Laxalt is ahead of Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, but only by 22,000 votes with 72 percent of the votes counted.
Democratic incumbents Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock are leading in Arizona and Georgia. With 99 percent of the votes counted, it looks like Republican senator Ron Johnson will win reelection in Wisconsin by 30,000 votes, a margin of 1 percent. (more…)
