The Netherlands: The 2017 Dutch parliamentary elections: A fragmented picture as Rutte and Wilders draw their battle lines: by Hans Vollaard

With only five months to go until the next parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, scheduled for March 2017, the country’s political parties are gearing up for the campaign. Debates over the annual budget in September gave a glimpse into the strategies of the main characters and how the main campaign themes of healthcare, migration and the economy might play out. The precise level of support each party will achieve is hard to predict due to the volatility of Dutch elections, but a fragmented parliament and a complicated coalition formation process are likely.

The elections for the Tweede Kamer, which is the most important chamber of parliament, will take place on 15 March if the present coalition government manages to serve its full term – which would be the first time this has occurred since 2002. Parties’ names and candidate lists should be registered with the Electoral Council in the coming months. The election will use a proportional representation system across a single nationwide constituency, ensuring the share of the 150 seats each party will receive is in line with the number of votes they obtain.

At present, the Tweede Kamer harbours 15 parliamentary groups, including five splinter groups. The current government relies on the support of the right-wing VVD of Prime Minister Mark Rutte (40 seats) and the centre-left PvdA (36 seats). The latter is internationally known for its Minister of Finance, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the chair of the Eurogroup (the ministers of finance of the Eurozone countries).

The recent budget debate underlined Rutte’s status as an able survivor in Dutch politics. Since becoming prime minister after elections in 2010 and 2012, he has shown sufficient flexibility to gain majority support for a series of major reforms to sustain the welfare state in the fragmented first and second chambers of parliament. Rutte now sits at the centre of the VVD’s campaign as the party looks toward 2017.

The leaders of the opposition parties will mostly be the same as in the last election in 2012, from the Animal Rights Party to the pensioners’ party, 50Plus. Only the small GroenLinks and ChristenUnie parties have changed leaders among the main players, although the PvdA still has to decide on a new leader (with its present parliamentary leader Diederik Samson one of the candidates). A new party, Denk, which split-off from the PvdA, will campaign for the sake of migrants and their descendants. On the right, two new parties are to be led by the leading faces of the referendum campaign against the EU-Ukraine Treaty which took place in April.

At present, the VVD’s main opponent is the anti-Islam and anti-EU Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, which has topped some recent polls. The VVD is in favour of fiscal austerity and a (European) free market, while it also advocates tough anti-crime and anti-terrorism policies, and is strict on migration and integration. The budget debate showed how the VVD has sought to distinguish itself from Wilders and the PVV. The party has emphasised its role in steering the Netherlands through economically difficult times and has also underlined that everyone should accept Dutch norms and values: that is, that Muslims and migrants should accept, but can also enjoy the country’s constitutional freedoms.

Read more: EUROPP – The 2017 Dutch parliamentary elections: A fragmented picture as Rutte and Wilders draw their battle lines

The Netherlands: Geert Wilders PVV drops 6 percentage points in latest election popularity political poll

The ruling VVD would be the biggest party in parliament if there was a general election tomorrow, according to a new poll from Kantar TNS, formerlly TNS Nipo.

The poll gives the right-wing Liberals 27 seats in the 150 seat parliament, or 18% of the vote. Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV, which was on target to win 29 seats in the September poll, has now slumped to 23.

In June, Nipo put support for the PVV as high as 36 seats, or 24% support. The middle ground is still held by the Liberal Democrats (D66), Socialists and Christian Democrats on 18 and 16 seats respectively.

Wilders who has alligned himself closely with Donald Trump, and even went to the Republican convention to openly endorse him can expect even more backlash from that decision if Trump looses in November

Almere-digest

Middle East: "A call for Peace, Forgiveness and Hope - Not for War but for Love"

While most of us in the more affluent societies around the world are enjoying, praising, and, often also bragging (to friends, family,on social media, etc.), about the pleasures of life this corrupt consumer society has brought us, let us also not forget to pray for those who are suffering and living under unimaginable conditions of despair and hopelessness.

Often, as a result of war, created by political deceit, greed and hypocrisy. Unfortunately, all this terror of war is also often caused by not only their, but also our very own Governments.

 May your prayers, however, not be one for Revenge, but for Peace, Forgiveness and Hope. Not for War. but for Love.

Check out the video: A call for Peace

Safe sea and air traffic navigation: German-Dutch pair to aid navigation around offshore wind farms - by Ivan Shumkov

German marine aids to navigation firm Sabik Offshore GmbH has partnered with Dutch aviation obstruction lights supplier Orga Aviation BV to develop and market an integrated solution for safe sea and air traffic around offshore wind farms.

This was announced on Monday by Canada’s Carmanah Technologies Corp (TSE:CMH), which is the owner of Schwerin-based Sabik Offshore.

The German firm has been supplying marine aids to navigation and ID marking solutions for offshore wind parks since 2008. During that time, Orga has often provided aviation obstruction products to complement Sabik Offshore’s solutions. Now, they will combine their offerings in a completely integrated system for wind farms that is designed, managed and marketed by Sabik Offshore, Carmanah explained.

Sabik Offshore offers temporary marking solutions during construction as well as permanent marking of offshore wind farms. Orga Aviation, in turn, provides lighting and marking solutions for both onshore and offshore wind farms.

Read more: German-Dutch pair to aid navigation around offshore wind farms - SeeNews Renewables

The Netherlands: Dutch Discontent Could Derail General Elections - by Marcel Michelson

The Netherlands is holding general elections in March 2017, the result of which will determine the make-up of the next government.

Mark Rutte, the liberal Prime Minister, is expected to lead his party for the third time and some commentators already expect a third Rutte coalition government but this time possibly not with the PVDA Labour party.

Yet the outcome could be drastically different. The Dutch government and Rutte think they have done a good job and the last annual state budget even contained some presents despite the Dutch’ tight hold on the purse strings.

But the noise in the lowlands is not about how cosy the country is, how nice the purchasing power, how decent the unemployment figures.

It is more about fraud scandals at semi-public institutions, pocket-lining local politicians, sporadic clashes with young Dutch descendants of immigrant families, and the new waves of refugees housed in special complexes all over the country.

The old political system in the Netherlands is falling apart.

For many decades, moderate religious parties in the centre held power even though they had to merge over time to keep the majority.

There were coalitions with either the labour party to the left or the liberals to the right, with a sprinkling of other smaller parties to make up the numbers.

But cooperation is not that easy anymore and the Dutch are not as happy as they seem.

In the wake of late populist politician Pim Fortuyn, shot dead in 2002 by an animal rights activist, Geert Wilders has been garnering a lot of protests votes with his anti-immigration and anti-EU stand.

Wilders has called for a Nexit, Dutch exit from the European Union, after Brexit.

He has been joined in this call by a new party; the Forum for Democracy.

Their leader Thierry Baudet wants more referenda, about the euro for instance and immigration, so that the Dutch citizens are more involved in the political process instead of the four-yearly delegation of power to parliament.

Baudet, and other politicians, are angered that the Dutch government has not implemented the result of a consultative referendum over a treaty with Ukraine.

While less than a third of the Dutch voted in the referendum in April this year, 61 per cent rejected the EU association agreement with Ukraine. The government of Mark Rutte, holding the EU presidency at that time, has so far ignored the result and thereby angered many citizens.

Immigration is also a key issue. While the Netherlands has often prided itself on its tolerance and hospitality, behind the curtains in the living room windows there are now harsher discussions.

On the one hand, Dutch youngsters from immigrant descent are held responsible for petty crimes and proselytism, while on the other hand some descendants of immigrants are demanding the Netherlands to abandon parts of its culture and traditions that hark back to the slave trade.

The annual children’s party of Sinterklaas in December, the Dutch variant on Santa Claus, has turned into an opinion battlefield due to the presence of Black Peter, black-faced helpers. For some, these helpers put the black community in a bad light and remind them of the slavery trade, while for others the blackened-faces are no more than disguises so that the children do not recognise the family members or neighbours who assist Sinterklaas, himself unrecognisable behind a large white beard, long hair and a bishop’s mitre and costume.

Another new party, Denk, is calling for a renewed balance in the Netherlands for all groups of Dutch people, irrespective of their family roots. The founders and leaders of Denk were members of the Labour Party with Turkish ancestors.

A leader of an organisation of Dutch people with Moroccan origins will also present himself on the Denk (“Think” in Dutch) list.

Denk would like better recognition of Palestine, less obstacles to private initiatives for education, Chinese, Arab and Turkish as options in basic education and a national racism register to fight racism.

With the children of the multi-cultural society in the Netherlands calling for mutual understanding and respect and the die-hard Dutch wanting to retreat in the polders behind closed borders, there is hardly a trace left of the “consensus” so dear to Dutch political tradition.

The country once known for its outward-looking attitude and knack for international trade and business seems stuck in an endless search for personal happiness in a cosy cocoon, and increasingly disconnected from the outside world.

Read more: Dutch Discontent Could Derail General Elections - EU And Immigration In Focus

Health care: Why hospital infections are a bigger threat than HIV, influenza and tuberculosis

If you're in hospital, take care - take very good care. A new study suggests the risk of hospital infections is higher than that of a number of global infectious diseases together, including HIV and flu.

You would think it was the other way around. But six healthcare-associated infections are a bigger burden on hospitals than influenza, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis together.

The big six are pneumonia, urinary tract and surgical site infections, Clostridium difficile (CDI, which results in antibiotic-associated diarrhea), neonatal sepsis and primary bloodstream infections. And they are all things you can contract while being treated for other things in hospital.

That's the conclusion of a study on Tuesday in Plos Medicine, a peer-reviewed open-access journal published by the San Francisco-based Public Library of Science.

Hospital acquired infections (HAIs) are the "most frequent adverse event in healthcare delivery worldwide," according to the World Health Organization (WHO) - with hundreds of millions of patients affected every year across the globe.

The EU and the European Economic Area face more than 2.5 million cases of hospital infections every year, the study suggests - and they are estimated to result in a burden of about as many so-called disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) - the years of a healthy life lost. The term is used to measure the impact of diseases on the health of a population.

The study is, according to its authors, "a solid first attempt" at estimating the burden of hospital infections, including the role of comorbidities, that is coexisiting multiple diseases. They stress "the need for intensified efforts to prevent and control these infections, ultimately making European hospitals safer places."

Read more: Why hospital infections are a bigger threat than HIV, influenza and tuberculosis | Sci-Tech | DW.COM | 18.10.2016

Britain - Brexit: The Worst of All Policy Ideas - by Stephan Richter

Brexit is the UK equivalent of the United States launching the Iraq War: Noble intentions perhaps, but an utterly self-defeatist move.

Come to think of it, Brexit is the worst of all policy ideas.

The whole idea militates against longstanding notions of British pragmatism. That smart school of thought always asks one simple question: What is the fastest, least cumbersome way to obtain a payoff for a policy move?

Brexit is the exact opposite of that: It is a highly complex maneuver with a very uncertain outcome and an equally uncertain payoff. In that sense, the Brexit agenda is entirely un-British.

Indeed, Brexit is such an abstract policy “idea” that it bears all the hallmarks of literally being a proverbial brain fart coming out of the obtuse minds of leftist French intellectuals.

It is well known that they have a strong penchant for trying to make the world fit their ideological predilections even against impossible odds.

What has been unknown to date is that British conservatives evidently seek to emulate those French intellectuals.

The most charitable thing one could say about Brexit is that British ultra-“sovereigntists” – sadly including Theresa May, the country’s new Prime Minister – may have noble intentions.

But these intentions are entirely naïve. They are, in fact, as laudable as the U.S. neocons’ ill-fated desire to “bring democracy to the Middle East.” Given where the Middle East is, those intentions, even if taken at face value, are at best wholly impractical and dangerously delusional.

Top British policymakers – Messrs. Johnson, Davis and Fox, the Theresa May’s “Three Musketeers” – and their supporters in the chattering class will find out a most unpleasant fact of life soon.

Many nations in the world have far more important goals to pursue than discussing the future possibility of a potential bilateral trade deal with the British government.

No matter how often British negotiators refer to the seemingly golden fact that the UK is the world’s fifth-largest economy, it won’t account for much.

In such a world, dealing with the UK is way down the agenda – as U.S. President Barack Obama made refreshingly clear during his pre-Brexit visit, when he talked about the UK finding itself at the end of a long queue for trade negotiations. 

Virtually every other nation is busy working on terrorism, finding strategies to promote employment for young people, securing pensions for old age and so forth.

Theresa May and the Brexit mastermind trio of Johnson, Davis and Fox must still believe that these are the days of Viceroy Mountbatten: London (or one of its representatives) calls – and the world jumps to attention. Not so.

Once it is understood just how badly they are overselling their case, frustration will settle in quickly.
 

Contrary to their continuing promises, they will have a very hard time to come up with any quick successes.

This is due to the very complex, interlocking logic of international trade deals – which British negotiators helped co-invent over the centuries.

Read more: Brexit: The Worst of All Policy Ideas