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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

They may have the cup...

It's election campaign season in the Netherlands, with Dutch voters due to choose their next government on 12 September. Caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte's VVD party has come up with a rather original way of planting the eurozone crisis into domestic political debate.

On 29 June, the party published the following campaign poster on its Facebook page:


The two players on the right - Andrea Pirlo of Italy and Xavi Hernández of Spain - need no introduction. However, the slogan on the left is quite interesting, as it says,
They may have the cup, not our creditworthiness.
The picture also had a short description above, saying,
Italy or Spain will become European football champions [as we mentioned, the post is from 29 June, two days before the Euro 2012 final]. Now they also need to become champions in cutting their budgets, because if we get things our way, there will be no arrangement through which they can benefit from our financial discipline while not putting their own things in order. Please like if you agree!
To date, the VVD post has 864 'Likes'.

As the elections get closer, tough rhetoric on the eurozone crisis, such as this, is likely to become a feature as Dutch politicians bid to 'steal' votes from Geert Wilders' far-right, notoriously anti-euro (and anti-EU), PVV.

Today, Dutch magazine Elsevier also reported that, at last week’s meeting of the ‘Future of Europe’ group, organised by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal warned that it was not the time to discuss any further transfer of national powers to the EU, especially in areas such as pensions, labour market and social security.

In light of what we have seen, for instance, in Finland ahead of the latest presidential elections, the picture above is another example of how further fiscal integration and eurozone bailouts are now at the forefront of election campaigns in the Triple-A countries.

2 comments:

Rik said...

Have a look at peil.nl:
https://n3.noties.nl/peil.nl/

They usually have good polls on the election as well as on Europe.

At the left a similar thing is happening the SP (Socialist Part, makes your Ed look like a Conservative) are EU-sceptic/anti-EU (not as strong as Wilders). However Dutch Labour, the PVDA is not like the VVD taking over these points.

Be aware that as far as I can judge it the wording of the question have a enormous influence on the outcome of a poll (like in Germany btw). You get the idea that the ones doing the poll are often playing with that. This one however looks reasonably neutral.
Allthough works with a panel (often means eg less working people, which can have a considerable influence).
Furthermore the results of other polls on the elections (like in France) give much larger differences in outcome as they all give themselves as margin.

Doubt if a proper majority government can be formed. On the extremes are 40% of the seats. And some of the remainder are likely having considerable problems with each other. Many VVD voters will not like the PVDA for instance. Going in a cabinet together nevertheless and a cabinet that is unstable (by nature) would be a huge gamble for a next election.
Very likely that either one or more of the extreme parties will have to be used to have a minority government but one that isnot sent packing the moment they start.
A lot of things can happen there.
Also in relation to the EU.

Btw Did you see the German Constitutional Court case on something else btw (but Merkel had also been doing some dodgy horsetrading legal work (like with the EZ)). It looks like according to many commentators if she messes up again that they will send the parliament home (for a new election).

viator said...

There is only one true AAA credit worthy sovereign left. Finland. All the remaining AAA sovereigns are on negative credit watch.