A Slight Miscalculation

Prime Minister Mark Rutte

Or how prime-minister Rutte has trouble encompassing the international perspective of national political issues.

Roughly a week ago the Dutch political party PVV launched a website where people are able to complain about East-Europeans in the Netherlands. The complaints out of which one can chose range from  disruptive behaviour to the ‘stealing’ of jobs, and specifically targets Polish, Bulgarian and other East-European workers. The site has sparked massive protests, both nationally and internationally. But one man, Mark Rutte, seems largely unmoved by the PVV stunt. If this man had been your next-door neighbour, nobody would care. But mr. Rutte is the prime minister of the Dutch government.

During the past days, both in the media and in political debates, Rutte has labeled the PVV website as a party affair and deemed it unworthy of his response. I tend to argue that this controversial website as not just a ‘party affair’, due to both national and international reasons, and that this miscalculation of the prime minister has consequences that could have been avoided.

The most probable reason of Rutte’s unwillingness to respond to the issue, lies in the difficult relation between his minority cabinet and the ‘unofficial’ support of the PVV in parliament (thus resulting in an almost permanent majority in parliament). The fact that some heavy budgetary cuts have to be made in the near future makes Rutte even more cautious in his relation with front-man Geert Wilders and his PVV, as he needs their support in parliament. As I’ve stated earlier, the position of mr. Wilders’ PVV is one of great power and minimal responsibility.

Political scientist Gijs Schumacher pointed to the electoral strategies behind Rutte’s politics in a small article  in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (16-02-2012). According to Schumacher, Rutte is not responding to Wilders to provide a reasonable alternative to voters, which makes it an electoral decision. I find this thought less convincing, simply because elections are still far away.

From a national perspective, Rutte is trying to maintain the peace, but the PVV website targets specific EU citizens. No wonder several diplomats and politicians from the affected countries, the EU parliament and council, have displayed their disgust over the initiative. Today, the European Parliament has invited Rutte to their debate about the notorious PVV website. It remains to be seen if the prime minister is able to explain how the website is just a party affair, while the responsible party also happens to be a semi-coalition partner within his government.

It seems that the prime minister’s tactic of ignoring the issue and calling it a party affair, only worsened the situation. It  does not only damage the international position and economic ties of the Netherlands, but may as well backfire into national politics. After all, Euro interference with a ‘national’ issue provides the anti-Euro parties with more fuel in these difficult political and economic times.