Do you want Bas Eickhout or Bas Eickhout? The members of GroenLinks and PvdA received another membership referendum in their mailbox on Monday, the second for the European elections in a short time. About the question of whether Bas Eickhout, a seasoned GroenLinks member, can lead the European election list. There is no other choice.
It is the second time that the 33,000 members of GroenLinks and the 39,000 members of the PvdA are allowed to express their opinion. They were recently given the opportunity to choose whether the European elections should be joint. Another consultation will follow soon about the rest of the candidate list. Then comes the democratic wrangling over the joint election programme. But the strange thing is: after the European elections the situation is back to normal: there is a delegation from GroenLinks and another from the PvdA in Brussels.
In Brussels, both parties are in two different European factions and they would like to keep it that way. The PvdA is with the Socialists and Democrats, GroenLinks with the Greens. They may almost merge into each other in the Netherlands, but neither party feels at home with the other’s European parent party.
Yet they enter the elections with one list, with Eickhout at the helm. It is now GroenLinks’ turn, it is said in both parties. The PvdA already got the main character for the House of Representatives elections with Frans Timmermans. Eickhout has been a member of the European Parliament for fifteen years. When he was first on the list, GroenLinks still thought that two terms of five years were enough, but the party has since reversed that position.
The number 2
The merger presents Europoliticians with all kinds of dilemmas. There was the question of which European faction, that has been resolved. But in a very practical sense, the question remains: how do PvdA and GroenLinks make it clear to the European Parliament’s housing department after the elections that they would like to have their offices on the same corridor? Now a PvdA member who wants to visit a GroenLinks member in Brussels has to take a lift and walk a few hundred steps. Ideally, the other person will soon be closer, but no one knows whether that will work.
There is another issue: number 2. Logically, the highest PvdA member should be there, but also, as tradition goes, a woman, because the PvdA alternates between men and women on the list. A woman and a delegation leader can of course go well together, but it just so happens that the current PvdA delegation leader Agnes Jongerius is going to resign. Now the name of Mohammed Chahim, a man, is often mentioned as her successor. Will he come in third place? He can then still become delegation leader, but it can be quite confusing for the PvdA voter.
By the way, no one knows yet where the other candidates will ultimately end up. Now only the name Eickhout is known, the rest will follow in February. It is determined in advance which party the candidate belongs to for each location. This means that positions 2, 3, 6, 7, 9 will be in PvdA hands, plus all odd numbers. GroenLinks gets the rest. PvdA members can vote on their part of the list, and GroenLinks on the other part. It will not be known until February 20 which name will appear behind which number on the rest of the list.
Program not yet known
All this time, the members still do not know what the program of their party is. That will only come later, in concept, and will only be finalized after the member conferences that both PvdA and GroenLinks will hold on April 20 in the same building, but in two different rooms.
Work is currently still underway on that program, because the separate program committees that GroenLinks and PvdA had already set up were later merged. There too there will be give and take: PvdA and GroenLinks do not always take the same position on all points. For example, some GroenLinks fear the text under the chapter ‘migration’ – on that point the PvdA has been to the right of GroenLinks for years.
Also read:
The scandalously low Brussels thresholds for lobbyists
In Strasbourg, MEP Mohammed Chahim (PvdA) talked about his Christmas holiday. It was fun, but less than usual. He couldn’t have a conversation without someone starting joking about suitcases of money. Where he hid them, whether he could lift them.
2024-01-22 18:42:00
#elections #PvdA #GroenLinks #separate #Brussels
