Dutch News

Prinsjesdag, the ceremonial presentation of the annual accounts, went down with a whimper rather than a bang, as well as plenty of bells and whistles for the royal household. Sigrid Kaag delivered a caretaker budget of minor tweaks ahead of a debate that failed to ignite the election campaign but covered plenty of ground, from the moon landings to the N35 regional road. Questions are asked after a Dutch tourist has an extended stay in Spain courtesy of the intelligence services. Feyenoord and PSV have contrasting fortunes in the Champions League. And a Frisian wool merchant who went to the ends of the earth and beyond to prove a point makes it onto Unesco's world heritage list.

The animal rights party PvdD completed its metamorphosis into a fully fledged Dutch political party this week with a bloody, bare-knuckled power struggle. Esther Ouwehand emerged as top dog in her battle with the party's management board, but will it knock the PvdD off their electoral perch? We discuss that, as well as the squabbles over D66's candidate list and the quickfire dismissal of Pieter Omtzigt's spokesman. In other news, public transport fares are going up, spending power is going down and the Dutch men's teams have something to celebrate. And a missing Van Gogh is recovered in an Ikea bag, which makes a nice change from pictures of bicycles on canal bridges.

This week the main political parties set out their stalls as the campaign for the first Rutte-free election in 20 years gathers momentum. Asylum minister Eric van der Burg loses yet another court case, this time on third-country nationals fleeing Ukraine. Denzel Dumfries dispatches Greece in Eindhoven while Max Verstappen sets yet another record in Monza. We look at why souped-up speed merchants on two wheels are threatening Amsterdam's status as a cycling haven. And could herring give way to squid and mullet as sea temperatures rise?

As is tradition in September, the cabinet’s plans for the coming year will strategically leak in the weeks before the budget is officially presented by king Willem-Alexander on Prinsjesdag. This week, it was revealed that the caretaker cabinet is planning to allocate 2 billion euros to combat the cost of living crisis, following the news that more than a million people would plummet into poverty if no action is taken. Meanwhile, prime minister Mark Rutte, finance minister Sigrid Kaag and foreign affairs minister were embroiled in a Macchiavellian scheme to find a replacement for out-going European Commissioner Frans Timmermans – it will most likely be Hoekstra, but not if it’s up to the green MEPs who promised to grill him at his upcoming hearing by the European Parliament. The Sociaal-Cultureel Planbureau concluded that low-level corruption might occur more often than you’d have thought and a report by Wageningen University showed that nitrogen-based pollution has to be reduced even further than initially th

The podcast returns to chew over the latest developments in the election campaign. Pieter Omtzigt steps into the fray, Dilan Yesilgöz steps into Mark Rutte's shoes, Wopke Hoekstra shuffles off to Brussels and Caroline van der Plas says she won't be standing anywhere in high heels. Nobody seems alarmed that the economy is in recession, while the dancing is over for Janssen's vaccine developers in Leiden. Sifan Hassan and Femke Bol recover from their stumbles to win medals in Budapest as Max Verstappen seems unstoppable in Zandvoort. And researchers go to the ends of the earth to identify a wartime resistance fighter after a 12-year search.

A special edition of the DutchNews podcast focuses the collapse of the cabinet, the end of the Rutte era and the upcoming election. Will immigration dominate the campaign, will Vincent Karremans get back on his high horse and will Pieter Omtzigt team up with the farmers? And what about the game of Tweede Kamer musical chairs, as several parties hold leadership contests before the election in November?

As we recorded this week's podcast, it was unclear if Mark Rutte was going to a step further than Vladimir Putin and stage a mutiny against his own government. The king apologised for the Dutch slave trading past and said the law could never be used to justify crimes against humanity. Dutch museums begin the process of repatriating hundreds of thousands of cultural artefacts taken during the colonial era. The head of national railways is widely mocked for his failure to understand the point of timetables. And there are calls for a statue to be erected to Bas de Leede after his exploits with bat and ball earn the Netherlands cricket team a place in the World Cup for the first time 12 years.

Justice minister Dilan Yesilgöz lends the far right a veil of respectability by backing a PVV proposal to ban police from wearing headscarves. Farmers Defence Force are roundly condemned for circulating MPs' phone numbers ahead of a debate on the stalled talks on agriculture reform. RIchard de Mos is at the centre of more chaos in The Hague as the coalition is unable to agree on how to rehabilitate him after his acquittal on corruption charges. The inquiry into the government's pandemic response is sidelined by a row over how many conspiracy theorists should sit on the committee. And the Netherlands raise their hopes of qualifying for the cricket world cup by snatching a dramatic win against the West Indies.

In an explosive week for education, schools minister Dennis Wiersma's short fuse detonated for the last time and universities erupted in protest against Robbert Dijkgraaf's "Dutch first" plan for bachelor degrees. The farmers' lobby pulled out of talks on funding a transition to sustainable agriculture, leaving the government's nitrogen strategy in the mire. More details emerge of how the government wasted millions of euros buying substandard face masks from coathanger magnates and car salesmen during the pandemic. A 4,000-year-old burial site emerges in Brabant just in time for the solstice. And we have news of mixed results for Dutch sportsmen in cricket, football and tennis.

The king announces he'll be taking regular train services after the decision to retire the royal carriage. He'll be able to travel to with NS, QBuzz or Arriva, but not Eurostar, who are furious about being shunted into a siding by the Dutch government. Also stuck in a rut are D66, who have been frozen out of provincial coalition talks by the BBB. Farmers are told whether they qualify for Christianne van der Wal's "wildly attractive" bonus scheme for peak polluters. Talks on a New Deal for farmers continue at the pace of a tractor protest after the lobby group LTO grudgingly agrees to stay on board. As the Netherlands confirms plans to train Ukrainian F-16 fighter pilots, we explain how Dutch intelligence tipped off Washington about a potential attack on the Nordstream pipeline. And while the football team are run ragged by Croatia and the ageless Luka Modric in the Nations League, there is better news for the nation's cricketers and ten pin bowlers.

It's a bad week for European connections as the eurozone slips into recession and Eurostar trains to Amsterdam face being suspended for seven months. Prime minister Mark Rutte faces a barrage of criticism over the thorny issues of migration and the Groningen gas field earthquakes. The ICJ in The Hague is deluged with terrible Russian excuses in a case brought by Ukraine. Bad water management is causing drought and threatening the future of native bees and the butterflies. And talking of endangered species, we have news of a successful Dutch men's sports team.

The new Senate is sworn in after the coalition parties emerge as the winners of the three-dimensional game of horse trading for the final seats. But not before the outgoing chamber rubber-stamps the outcome of 16 years of talks to reform the pension system. Councillors in The Hague swiftly remove signs proclaiming glory to Ukraine just as councillors in Zeeland put signs up banning hedonism in the dunes. Police, prosecutors, protesters and Amnesty International are all unhappy with the handling of the latest Extinction Rebellion protest on the A12. KLM hits back at a report that claims it failed to honour the conditions of its €3.4bn coronavirus bailout. And in an otherwise gloomy season for Ajax, the title-winning women's team have another reason to celebrate as Edwin van der Sar bows out as CEO.

Amsterdam bans smoking joints in public in the latest stage of the capital's 12-step plan to kick its drug tourism dependency. The political agenda is dominated by the long-running pension talks and fears of another asylum system meltdown this summer. Wopke Hoekstra flies to Beijing to reassure the Chinese that little things like war, genocide and industrial espionage won't spoil a €73bn trade partnership. One football coach abruptly quits, another unexpectedly stays, while Ajax's women have their league title celebrations cancelled so as not to humiliate the underperforming men's team. And armed forces personnel face a grilling over claims that they used a training fund to procure luxury barbecues.

Brabant is the unlikely setting this week for a tale of industrial espionage running from Greece to Moscow via Paris. The national audit office takes time out from infiltrating army bases to deliver a damning verdict on the government's handling of the economy. GDP unexpectedly nosedives after it emerges that bamischijven are disappearing from Friday afternoon works gatherings. Mark Rutte dashes from a summit in Iceland where he made vague promises to send F-16s to Ukraine to a meeting where he vaguely promised to resolve the nitrogen crisis. In a busy week for the courts, a Russian oligarch fails to evict squatters from his Amsterdam mansion while a French author loses his bid to block an "essayistic" adult movie. And Feyenoord win the Eredivisie but lose the distinction of having the worst hooligans in the Netherlands to troubled FC Groningen.

Rotterdam's runaway vulture is bound for a Mediterranean island retreat after startling the owner of a house in Leipzig by turning up beside his pond. Closer to home, GroenLinks and BBB have mixed results as they try to form provincial administrations. Interpol launches an appeal to try to identify 22 women murdered across three countries in the last 50 years. Housing minister Hugo de Jonge struggles to get his plan to build 37,500 container homes off the ground. Feyenoord are on the brink of winning the Eredivisie for the first time in six years, while Max Verstappen continues his juggernaut-like pursuit of a third Formula 1 title.

On the day when the Dutch commemorate their war dead, the president of Ukraine jetted in to give a sobering reminder that wars are not just for the history books. Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the ICC, the Senate, the Catshuis and a royal palace in a whirlwind tour that covered more ground than the Russian army managed in six months in Bakhmut. Dodenherdenking also featured a moving speech by a teenage girl about the Sinti victims of the Holocaust, a bugle-hating cat and yet another ophef-inducing tweet by Caroline van der Plas. PSV won the Dutch cup final in a forgettable match that culminated in a woeful penalty shoot-out. And DutchNews has a wartime exclusive of its own – tune in to find out more, as well as what to do if you have any wartime documents gathering dust in the attic. You can find out more about the campaign to donate war memorabilia and details of participating museums at https://www.actienietweggooien.nl

Prime Minister Mark Rutte once again apologised to the people of Groningen for how they have been treated by the government in the past decades and pledged 22.5 billion of investments in the province’s infrastructure, public facilities and healthcare to compensate for the physical and mental damages caused by gas extraction induced earthquakes. Climate minister Rob Jetten announced the cabinet’s 30 billion euro plans to tackle climate change, while an extra 2 billion is invested to solve the asylum and migration crisis to avoid a repeat of last summer when hundreds of asylum seekers had to sleep in tents due to a shortage of accommodations. After a very expensive week, Finance minister Sigrid Kaag warned that the government is reaching the end of its deep pockets. Luckily, she found a typical Dutch kitchen tool at one of the King’s Day freemarkets that’s perfect for bringing the budget back on track. In other news, criminal lawyer Inez Weski was arrested after she allegedly helped her client Ridoughan Taghi c

The government's woes keep piling up as squatting badgers throw a spanner into the works of their efforts to house refugees. Talks with farmers' groups on nitrogen reduction are on the verge of breaking down while the government grapples with conflicting demands from opposition parties. Travellers are warned to face another summer of misery at Schiphol. The MIVD foils a Russian spy vessel posing as a fishing boat, possibly after the crew make a misguided attempt to blend in by drinking Russian-bottled Heineken. Rabobank says young families are fleeing Amsterdam for cheaper homes in the provinces. Ajax go viral by hanging a virtual poster on the wall of a fictional British pub from an American TV series. And a hotel chain threatens to sue Amsterdam city council over the location of its multi-storey 'erotic centre'. Buy your nun-alcoholic wine here: https://www.omroepbrabant.nl/nieuws/4264040/nonnen-zitten-met-64000-flessen-wijn-in-hun-maag-het-was-te-zonnig

French president Emmanuel Macron was confronted by protests and tough questions on his relations with China on his state visit to The Hague, but the Dutch language turned out to be his biggest adversary. Farmers' party BBB looks set to shut out D66 from provincial government as tensions grow in the coalition on its nitrogen policy. Schiphol airport presses on with plans to cut the number of flights even after a court rules it doesn't have to. And we have a menagerie of animal stories, from runaway meerkats and pole-squatting storks to the untimely demise of a gorilla who became a household name.

A carousel of rubbish this week as Amsterdam imports 900 tonnes of waste from Rome while launching a campaign to keep out trashed British tourists. Mark Rutte promises to listen better to voters as he tries to save his government from the scrapheap, while Wopke Hoekstra tries to salvage his credibility by finding common ground with BBB leader Caroline van der Plas. Sex workers protest against being dumped in an out-of-town 'erotic centre' as the city council tries to clean up the red light district. French writer Michel Houellebecq fails to get his accidental porn film canned by the courts. Oranje are dumped on by the French in football and sent packing by Zimbabwe in cricket. And Greenpeace steps up its campaign against the high-flying, high-polluting super rich and their private jets. Stay Away campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be9yFONsMow