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NOS News•today, 19:37
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If there is something going on in politics that seems unsolvable, who do you call? Johan Remkes. The 71-year-old VVD mastodon has once again been called up as a ghostbuster from The Hague. This time as an “independent moderator” he has to try to put the genie back in the bottle to mediate in the rising nitrogen conflict between farmers and the cabinet.
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Remkes has proved indispensable in recent years as a solver of headache files. It is freshest in memory refloating the formation of the Rutte IV cabinet. Every potential coalition party excluded a necessary other party, after the crisis of confidence that arose when Prime Minister Rutte suggested a “function elsewhere” for the critical CDA MP Pieter Omtzigt. With a lot of mental massage, he managed to force a restart of the Rutte III cabinet, by getting VVD, D66, CDA and ChristenUnie back to the negotiating table.
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Retired problem solver
De Groninger has a long track record in politics. He has fulfilled just about every function imaginable. Remkes once started as a deputy in his home province, after which he was a member of the House of Representatives, state secretary, minister, deputy prime minister and king’s commissioner. So much for his regular career.
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After he left as the King’s Commissioner in North Holland in 2018, Remkes announced his retirement. He wanted to spend more time on his private life. But little came of those plans when serious political problems arose in The Hague – that is, the municipality of The Hague.
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Mayor Pauline Krikke resigned in 2019 after a very critical report about the bonfire in Scheveningen that got out of hand. At the same time, a crisis had arisen due to corruption investigations into aldermen Richard de Mos and Rachid Guernaoui, as a result of which the council fell.
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Remkes was recalled from Groningen to the mayor position to perceive, and to put things in order in the city council of The Hague. It worked. After nine months, he handed over the chain of office to the new mayor Jan van Zanen, and was promptly appointed to honorary citizen from The Hague.
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In the meantime, Remkes had also delved into the nitrogen dossier. In 2019, the Council of State had drawn a line through the Dutch nitrogen policy and Remkes, as chairman of the Advisory Board on Nitrogen Problems, had to publish a report on how to proceed. Advice van Remkes was presented in June 2020 and serves as a kind of source document for the current government nitrogen plans.
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After two troubleshoot jobs, Remkes said he would now really retire. Although, not much later, Remkes nuanced this by saying that a new job had to be done from Groningen. A few months later he became acting governor in Limburg.
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The entire provincial government had resigned because of a subsidy scandal and Remkes had to provide a new board. Even during his temporary governorship, Remkes was also allowed to try to form a new government coalition. It resulted in the Rutte IV cabinet.
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Now Remkes has to come to the aid of the cabinet again as a mediator in the farmer’s crisis. Farmers’ organizations and some opposition parties reacted lukewarm to extremely critical of Remkes’ appointment. It is difficult to call a VVD member who with his report also formed the substantive basis of the current nitrogen plan an “independent discussion leader”, is the criticism.
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Political preference in the background
Remkes will probably counter that with reference to his past. He also received similar criticism when he was chairman of the Advisory Board on Nitrogen Problems. But despite his background as a VVD member, he nevertheless issued a strongly critical report on the plans of a cabinet led by VVD member Mark Rutte, and he did not find that difficult, he said. against NRC: “I sit there as independent chairman. If you put your own political preference in such a role to the fore and want to push through your own views, then it will be a hopeless failure.”
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Nevertheless, there is a chance that Remkes’ opponents will put his background in the foreground, although they too have to admit that Remkes has had a lot of success in the past. “Great respect for his track record, that is beyond dispute,” said leader Caroline van der Plas of the BoerBurgerBeweging. Now it’s up to him to convince those critics who think he’s automatically on the side of the cabinet that they’re seeing ghosts.
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