Aerial view of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain (Unsplash/Carles Rabada)
Pedro Sánchez’ chances of remaining prime minister narrowed on Saturday, when the votes of almost 234,000 Spaniards living abroad were counted. His Socialist Workers’ Party lost one seat in Congress to Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s conservative People’s Party. The left- and right-wing blocs would have 171 seats each, assuming Sánchez can convince the two Basque nationalist parties and the center-left Republicans of Catalonia to support him.
The center-right Canarian Coalition, with one seat, and the centrist Junts (Together) of Catalonia, with seven seats, would hold the balance of power.
The Canarians refuse a deal that includes Vox (Voice). Feijóo has no realistic path to a majority without the far-right party, which won 33 seats. But the Canarians are unlikely to vote for Sánchez either. They may abstain.
Junts‘ demand — an independence referendum in Catalonia — is unacceptable to Sánchez. But the Basque branch of his Socialist Party has a plan that might just win Junts over: a federal Spain. (more…)
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez speaks at a rally of his Socialist Workers’ Party in Badajoz, May 23 (PSOE)
Spain has done well under Pedro Sánchez. The economy is projected to grow 2 percent this year and next, faster than the EU average. Unemployment is at its lowest since 2008. Inflation is down from 8 to under 3 percent. Spaniards pay almost the lowest energy bills in Europe. Renewables provide 50 percent of Spain’s electricity.
Sánchez, a social democrat who governs with the far left, has protected Spaniards from the worst effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine by temporarily reducing sales tax on food and fuel and by paying the wages of workers who lost their jobs. He has invested 40 percent of Spain’s EU COVID-19 recovery funds into green projects.
He has also made structural reforms, like raising the minimum wage and reducing severance pay. He cut taxes for small businesses and incomes under €300,000, and paid for it by raising taxes on capital gains and incomes over €3 million.
The left-wing coalition government — the first since the Civil War — banned “gay conversion therapy”, legalized euthanasia for the terminally ill and required slaughterhouses to install cameras. (more…)
Esteban González Pons, the group leader of Spain’s conservative People’s Party in the European Parliament, gives a news conference in Madrid, June 13, 2022 (PP)
Spanish conservatives still hope they can neutralize the far right by cooperating with it.
Esteban González Pons, the group leader of Spain’s People’s Party in the European Parliament, told The New York Times that bringing Vox (Voice) into the government might “normalize” it:
Vox will be another party, a conservative party inside of the system.
Polls predict the People’s Party (PP) will win the election this month with 31 to 37 percent support. It would need Vox’s 12 to 15 percent for a majority.
To his credit, Pons acknowledged there is a risk: “We can legitimize Vox.” Arguably, it already has by not ruling out a coalition. (more…)
An American F-16 fighter jet takes off from Souda Air Base, Greece, August 18, 2014 (USAF/Daryl Knee)
Election results in Greece and Turkey create a dilemma for the United States in navigating relations between its two Eastern Mediterranean allies.
The overlapping tenures of Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have been marked by tensions between the United States and Turkey and deepening ties between the United States and Greece.
The reelection of both men reinforces a trend in which American-Greek defense cooperation risks undermining Turkish security.
To avoid a destabilizing balance of power in the region, Washington could slow-walk the sale of F-35s to Greece and use the time to rebuild confidence in Ankara. (more…)
Muntplein in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, March 27, 2021 (Unsplash/Ruben Hanssen)
The Netherlands is becoming a case study in how not to regulate rents. An expansion of rent control is driving investors and landlords to despair. Appeals by banks, pension funds, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are falling on deaf ears in The Hague.
The European Commission is the latest international body to urge the Dutch government to reconsider. In its annual policy recommendations to member states, it cautions the Netherlands that its “policies regarding the private rental market risk undermining its development.”
[T]he private rental market is relatively small, which results in a limited supply of affordable and available alternatives to buying a house. The lack of affordable rental housing also undermines labor mobility.
There are 440,000 job openings. 360,000 Dutch people are still unemployed. A shortage of affordable housing, especially in major cities, is a factor. The average waiting time for a nonprofit social-housing apartment in Amsterdam is thirteen years. Yet the government would make it less lucrative to rent out homes for profit. (more…)
Dutch justice minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius inspects a prison in Vught, June 9, 2022 (LinkedIn)
The Dutch city of Rotterdam has been rocked by attacks on homes and stores. More explosions were reported in the first four months of this year than during the whole of 2022. The perpetrators, suspected to be drug criminals, have used fireworks, improved explosive devices and hand grenades.
According to local politician Vincent Karremans, who is in the same liberal party as me, one in four of suspects are under the age of 18.
Here in Amsterdam, police have also seen in an increase in teenagers selling drugs and taking part in drug-related violence, even assassinations. They are usually boys of Moroccan, Turkish or another immigrant descent.
The knee-jerk reaction on the right is to escalate the drug war. Give more money to customs and police. Weaken privacy rights, so police can tap phones without a warrant and share information on suspects with non-judicial agencies. Lengthen prison sentences for drug crimes.
But even Karremans, who is in favor of repression, knows: “that also causes unrest.” When the police get better at their jobs, so do criminals. The recent attacks in Rotterdam — some have been on the homes of family members of suspected drug dealers — follow the arrest and prosecution of prominent drug lords.
I argue in the Dutch newsletter De Nieuwe Vrije Eeuw that it’s time to rethink our policy. (more…)
Catalan Socialist Party leader Salvador Illa listens to his Basque counterpart, Eneko Andueza, making a speech, January 16 (Socialistas Vascos)
Catalonia’s Socialists missed an opportunity after the last election to split up the region’s left- and right-wing independence parties. The moderate Republican Left, which supports a Socialist government nationally, had tired of the hardliners in Together for Catalonia (Junts), but local Socialist Party leader Salvador Illa wouldn’t accept anything short of the presidency for himself.
“Why should I invest a person that I defeated at the polls?” he remarked of the Republican party leader, Pere Aragonès.
Illa won 50,000 more votes than the Republicans, but both parties got 33 out of 135 seats. Aragonès claimed the presidency too, but he had two paths to a majority, not one. Illa’s intransigence drove the Republicans into the arms of Junts.
But the coalition proved short-lived and Illa has recently set his ego aside. (more…)
American president Ronald Reagan at Rancho Del Cielo in California, August 31, 1985 (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
Ronald Reagan once quipped about government’s view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
For the American president, it was a cautionary tale. In the newspaper Trouw, I argue the Dutch government seems to have mistaken it for advice. (more…)
Farmers prune vines in Renmark, Australia, July 8, 2021 (Unsplash/Zac Edmonds)
Animal farming causes around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all airplanes, cars, trains and trucks combined. It is responsible for a third of biodiversity losses around the world.
Yet consumption of dairy, eggs and meat is rising. Americans and Europeans already eat more than 1,000 animals in their lifetime. There may be two billion more mouths to feed by the middle of this century. If populations in Africa and Asia adopt a “Western” diet — high on animal proteins — we would need to double the crops we grow by 2050.
How? Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, argues the debate has become polarized:
Those who favor conventional agriculture talk about how modern mechanization, irrigation, fertilizers and improved genetics can increase yields to help meet demand. And they’re right. Meanwhile proponents of local and organic farms counter that the world’s small farmers could increase yields plenty — and help themselves out of poverty — by adopting techniques that improve fertility without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. They’re right too.
High tech is the answer in some places and sectors. Organic and regenerative farming is better in others.
The one thing we should stop everywhere is factory farming. In addition to the harm it causes to the climate and our natural world, it is cruel to the animals who are reared in it.
Male baby chicks are ground up alive, because they won’t produce eggs. Cows are forcibly inseminated and kept perpetually pregnant to produce milk. Calves are separated from their mothers after birth. Most bulls are slaughtered after fifteen to eighteen months when their natural life expectancy is 18 to 22 years. Chickens and pigs live their entire lives in cages that are barely largely enough for them to turn around in. Many don’t see daylight until they are transported to slaughter.
There has to be a better way to feed the world. (more…)
Dutch fishing boat trawling for mussels in the North Sea, April 20, 2020 (Unsplash/Paul Einerhand)
The European Commission is advising member states to tap into EU innovation and rural development funds to compensate fishers who will lose out if bottom trawling is banned.
Virginijus Sinkevičius, the Lithuanian commissioner for oceans and fisheries, has proposed to phase out bottom trawling, also known as dragging, in 30 percent of EU waters.
The better policy would be to reverse a ban on electric pulse fishing, which allows fishers to catch sole and other flatfish without ploughing the seafloor. (more…)
Dutch labor minister Karien van Gennip in The Hague (ANP/Laurens van Putten)
Instead of making it easier for companies to hire workers on a permanent basis, the Dutch government is banning various types of temp work and making freelancers more expensive.
Too many workers with a flexible contract or who are self-employed don’t have … security. At the same time, especially small business owners are reluctant to hire people on a permanent basis. This needs to change.
Yet she is doing little to reduce risks for entrepreneurs while taking abundant steps to give workers more “security”. (more…)
French president Emmanuel Macron and Portuguese prime minister António Costa talk privately during a meeting of European leaders in Brussels, February 9 (European Council)
Manhattan, New York at night, April 2, 2020 (Unsplash/Peter Olexa)
A panel of external experts has advised the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve over-the-counter sales of naloxone nasal spray.
Naloxone is an affordable and risk-free way to save drug users from an overdose. The spray costs $250 without insurance and prevents deaths from fentanyl, heroin and painkillers. Naloxone has no effect on people who are sober.
Only 29 states allow pharmacists to sell naloxone without a prescription. Even in the states that allow over-the-counter sales, there isn’t enough of the stuff. A study published in The Lancet estimates that 1,270 more naloxone kits are needed for every 100,000 residents to avoid 80 percent of opioid overdose deaths. (more…)
St Thomas’ Hospital in London, England, January 31, 2019 (iStock/Ray Lipscombe)
Ambulance workers and nurses are planning to strike in England and Wales on Monday in what could become the largest walkout in the National Health Service’s history.
Emergency care will still be provided, but planned operations and outpatient services are being postponed.
Unions says nurses and paramedics are overworked and underpaid. They are demanding a 5 percent increase in wages over inflation, which is 14 percent. The governments of England and Wales have given an average of 4.75 percent with a guaranteed minimum income of £1,400 per month.
Health workers deserve a raise, but this won’t solve the NHS’s many other problems. At some point Britain has to accept the NHS is the problem. (more…)
Dutch housing minister Hugo de Jonge visits a building site in Rijswijk, January 14, 2022 (BZK)
The Dutch government wants to make it easier to build new homes — after it made it harder.
Housing minister Hugo de Jonge, a Christian Democrat in a coalition of four parties that includes my own, told parliament he wants to defeat NIMBYism with four proposals:
We owe it to all those looking for a house to do whatever we can to speed up home construction.
I wish he had thought of that a year ago, when he started the job. (more…)
