There is no agreement yet, but PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB will not be present in the formation area of the House of Representatives in the coming days. At most, contact is maintained outside the meeting room, but official formation meetings are not scheduled.
NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt rejects criticism that there is slow part-time formation, as D66 faction leader Jan Paternotte says. “There has been no talking here for a few days now, no, but it is also very good not to have four or eight of us talking without all of you there,” he said, pointing to journalists.
Five months after the elections, isn’t more urgency needed from the four parties? “You know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be very long sessions. And these are still very short texts, because we are working on an agreement in broad terms. But the main actors are still working full-time.”
What plays a role is that Omtzigt himself has private appointments in the coming days. Wilders will soon have the funeral of his deceased mother and has also chosen to go to Hungary on Friday for the international ultraconservative conference CPAC. Wilders did not want to explain the latter decision on Wednesday.
The PVV leader speaks during CPAC with political friends, such as the criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He is accused of violating the rule of law in Hungary. NSC leader Omtzigt, who claims to be the guardian of the rule of law in the Netherlands, said he was ‘very curious’ what Wilders will say at the conference. “Everyone has their own political friends, I’m not talking about that. You know my criticism of a number of countries when it comes to the rule of law, but we are making agreements here about the Netherlands.”
Financial consequences
In the meantime, the accountants at the Central Planning Bureau (CPB) are starting to work on the draft plans of the prospective cabinet. They will calculate the financial consequences of the agreements of PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB. CPB director Pieter Hasekamp expects to be able to update the forming parties at the end of next week about the financial and economic consequences of their plans. Hasekamp did not want to say on Wednesday how detailed this will be.
BBB did not want to have its own election manifesto (just like PVV and NSC) calculated, because the CPB would look too one-sidedly at the effects of policy. Some of these effects cannot be expressed in money, said BBB leader Caroline van der Plas. Yet she now agrees to a calculation. But does she accept the conclusions if the results are disappointing? “We’ll see what happens. These are if-then questions. If my aunt had had a penis, it would have been my uncle,” said Van der Plas.
Tags: Formation pause Omtzigt hear criticism Formation necessarily involve long sessions
