The peaceful black-and-white or red-and-white spotted cows are almost as much a cliché of the Dutch landscape as tulips and windmills. But it is precisely the fate of cows – and 100 million animals, including pigs and chickens – that Prime Minister Mark Rutte was at odds with in Wednesday’s provincial elections.
Anger at his “agricultural land memorandum” proposed this summer to reduce nitrogen emissions fueled polls for the new populist party emerging on the Dutch political landscape: the Burenburger Beweging, literally “civil movement of farmers”. , received 19% of the vote The election. When he entered Parliament in 2021, he had only won one seat; now the newly elected Provincial Assembly is so composed that they are guaranteed at least 15 in the Senate alone. This would make the new party the largest bloc in the House of Lords linked to the Green-Labour coalition; while Rutte’s coalition, liberal-conservative, is likely to reduce the total number of seats from 32 to 24. Mark Rutte, the longest-serving Prime Minister in the history of the Netherlands – he has headed the government since 2010 – congratulated but also declared that “the government will remain stable in the coming years”.
It remains to be seen, and the next obstacles to government action are also likely to be environmental.
On the one hand, the dispute with the Peasant Party. The leader, Caroline van der Plas, with a theatrical air and strong popular charisma, is a former journalist specializing in agriculture and livestock. Yesterday he celebrated in The Hague. “The Netherlands have clearly shown that they are fed up with this environmental policy,” he said.
Blamed is the Rutte Memorandum, which implements European limits for nitrogen and ammonia pollution, which are heavily tied to farms (ie to the faeces and urine of livestock). According to the estimate, the 100 million cows, pigs and chickens kept in “Europe’s stables” must be reduced by a third by law: The Netherlands is the EU member state with the highest density of livestock, and 11,200 farms should close if they don’t change over. The government is also offering to take them on, but few have said they will. “It’s not just about nitrogen, it’s about citizens not being seen, not being heard, not being taken seriously,” snapped van der Plas.
But the environment will also cost Rutte on the left. In the Senate, after Wednesday’s caning, he will have to lean on the Greens-Labour coalition if he is to pass the new law. And the “allies” will demand a higher duty from him than he would be willing to pay: for example, the closure of all coal-fired power plants in two years.