(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Het ontbreekt Nederland aan gekozen burgemeesters die de Haagse dwangwetten van tafel zouden kunnen krijgen)
The Distribution Act (Spreidingswet), once presented as the solution to asylum problems, mainly spreads quarrels, conflicts, and violence. It is a coercion law that orders municipalities to take in asylum seekers, but most citizens feel the limit has been reached. Nevertheless, D66 Prime Minister Rob Jetten, after a week’s stay in the sunny Caribbean Netherlands, simply wants to press on. He intends to dispatch “flying teams of experts” against unwilling municipalities. The “experts” — a popular term in D66 circles — are supposed to convince local authorities and ignorant citizens that The Hague is right. “Smaller municipalities, too, must do their part in solidarity,” Jetten said.
The patience of the Netherlands’ top administrators is running out. Mark Boumans (VVD), mayor of Doetinchem and vice-chairman of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), called for a hard line against protesters opposing the arrival of asylum-seeker centers. Citizen resistance is inevitable, but in such cases violence is a poor counselor and proves counterproductive.
The mayor of Doetinchem was named “Administrator of the Year” last year, and would certainly qualify for a larger municipality — perhaps one of the largest. On the program Buitenhof on May 17 he argued that the cabinet “should deploy the army” against rowdy protests. Armies, apart from war, are used by dictators to keep their own citizens under the boot. That the mayor of Doetinchem, a quiet town with the character of a village, brandishes such terms looks more like an open bid for a post in the Randstad.
Cultural Differences
The core problem — immigration and asylum — has been debated in the Netherlands in every possible way for thirty years. An asylum policy can only be effective if it is strict. Too large an inflow leads to friction, conflict, and revolts. Especially when cultural differences are large.
The Netherlands took in over 100,000 Ukrainians after the Russian invasion in 2022. A considerable number, but the cultural differences were bridgeable. Many studied or worked. It turns out differently with 100,000 Somalis, because the cultural gulf is too great. Let alone with 100,000 Palestinians, because then you would be importing the entire Gaza conflict along with them. There has to be a balance between numbers and cultural differences. During the First World War, the Netherlands, with six million inhabitants, took in a million Belgian refugees. Almost no one knows this, because there were few problems; the cultural differences were small.
The current inflow is too large and the outflow too small. That leads to conflicts between “know-it-all” administrators and citizens who are often looked down upon. Some media portray protesting citizens as “extremist” in order to criminalize them. Mayors and municipal councils are caught between hammer and anvil: a centralist The Hague and unwilling citizens. As the asylum stream grows, so does the asylum industry, such as the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA), which this year has a budget of 4.2 billion euros. The number of COA staff grew from 3,000 to 8,000. It is “big business.”
With the continuing influx, the Distribution Act becomes unworkable and ultimately unenforceable, but for The Hague that is rocket science. Sharon Dijksma, mayor of Utrecht, is chair of the VNG — quite an achievement, given that she never completed her public administration studies at the University of Twente. She rose through the Young Socialists of the PvdA and became a member of the House of Representatives at twenty-three. She says: the Distribution Act is the law. Her law studies in Groningen, incidentally, were also never completed.
When it comes to mayors, the Netherlands holds a singular position in the EU: it is the only member state where the mayor is appointed “centrally.” The “Crown” appoints them; in practice the Minister of the Interior decides. In all other EU member states the mayor is elected, directly or sometimes via the municipal council. Take Belgium. There the elected mayor is not Brussels’ errand boy, but stands up for the citizens. In Flanders, mayors are a strong political force; they do not want (too many) asylum seekers, and the reception is far more austere than in the Netherlands, where Van der Valk hotels or even cruise ships open their doors. And so the influx naturally gravitates toward the Netherlands.
A mayor in the Netherlands looks over his shoulder at a domineering The Hague, where his next post is decided. In Belgium (but also in France, Italy, Austria, and the rest of Europe) the mayor looks the citizens straight in the eye. That makes the Dutch mayor weak and hesitant. Take acting mayor Mark Verheijen (VVD) of Wijdemeren, which includes Loosdrecht. The residents are informed late about the coming asylum-seeker center and angrily take to the streets. Verheijen cracks down hard, but then turns around and apologizes. He is stuck between citizens and The Hague. If he sides fully with the citizens, The Hague will not forget that when handing out mayoral posts.
At the local level the Netherlands is not a real democracy, because The Hague decides who becomes mayor. At the provincial level it is the same story. There the King’s Commissioner (CdK) is also appointed centrally, by The Hague, as a kind of “envoy of the King.” Here too the CdK will let the wishes of The Hague prevail over those of the provincial council members. Mayor and King’s Commissioner invariably tell their municipality and province: “The Hague requires it.” In this centralist model the House of Representatives is, to be sure, directly elected, but it increasingly takes on the character of a fragmented municipal council.
Cuddle Police or Club Police
Public administration is becoming confused. The Dutch police, once “your best friend,” are losing their bearings, especially at protest gatherings: who is right and who is wrong? At demonstrations by Extinction Rebellion, the riot police approach the demonstrators as if they were spoiled children — which they also are — who are asked to leave the highway. The protesters then simply remain seated. If necessary, the police carry them away. But at asylum-center protests, the riot police recklessly club citizens with batons, as if they were criminals. This leads, to use an English term, to “two-tier police.” In short: is it the cuddle police (knuffelpolitie) or the club police (knuppelpolitie)?
D66 was traditionally a proponent of the elected mayor, but now that the party provides the prime minister, it stays silent. A pity — it was a legacy of party figurehead Hans van Mierlo. An elected mayor has his own base and legitimacy; precisely what the higher powers in The Hague do not want. For The Hague, the mayor is a “subcontractor.”
Worse still: the Netherlands has “appointed mayors” who neglect their own citizens because they are too busy with “foreign policy,” especially in the four largest cities. Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema tops them all, coming across as a political faith healer on a global scale. Her actual task, however, reads: to govern the city well.
No Base, But Plenty of Reprimands
Unelected mayors hand out reprimands the moment Israel is involved. The mayor of Utrecht laid a floral arrangement on the Domplein for the Nakba commemoration, while flowers and wreaths in memory of the May 4 Remembrance of the Dead were being thrown away just down the road. Tasteless. What is more, her Nakba narrative is historically incorrect.
Amsterdam conducts a foreign policy that makes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague practically superfluous. Would these unelected mayors pour so much time into “abroad” if they had to be elected at home in their own cities? Strong rival candidates would then step forward, some with a real base and more capable than they are. A mayor on a world tour would lose at home.
With these globe-trotting mayors, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is downgraded to an NGO that must provide aid worldwide and read leaders the riot act everywhere. Reprimands against Israel pile up. The term “Dutch interest”? Of no interest to our unelected, big-city “experts.”
Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.