Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 05:27
Easy First Day Financial Discussions House
After two weeks of heavy negotiations, the politics in the Hague have come to an easier mode. There was no fireworks in the House during the first day of the financial discussions.
The financial discussions in the House always come one week later than the general discussions about the Dutch National Budget.
The general budget discussions of this year were quite loaded. The government announced a week earlier the budget plans for 2014. Because the coalition parties have no majority in the Senate, there was a possibility that the government would be more or less paralyzed as what happened with the pension plans which were stopped by the Senate.
The financial discussions were postponed and opposition and coalition partners tried to find a solution. After two weeks negotiating the coalition partners found in SGP, ChristenUnie and D66 soul mates for adjusted budget plans for 2014. There was now a majority in the Senate for the budget of 2014.
After so much discussion among opposition parties and coalition parties over the last weeks, the discussion in the House started therefore relatively calm on the first day. There were almost no questions for the members of the government and the discussion focused more on the position of the three parties which ‘allow’ the government to go on.
PVV, SP and PvdD already made clear that they want asap new elections. 50Plus, CDA and GroenLinks didn’t got what they wanted during the two weeks negotiations and backed out.
On Wednesday these parties were especially busy to find out how is the status of the political chess board.
All three constructive opposition parties stated more than once that they are not just followers of the government on everything and not even on all the financial plans. Their point of view is that they have taken their responsibility in these difficult times, therefore agreed on a budget plan for 2014 in which many of their wishes have been implemented, but that they are still real opposition parties.
The problem of the government of the minority in the Senate is passed sense, the government, with the help of the three constructive opposition parties, can now put the plans into concept laws and cut the extra six billion euro which the European Commission wants.
Thursday will be the second day and last day of the financial discussions in the House.