“The Netherlands expects more cooperation” Related articles

GroenLinks and PvdA are joining forces during the Provincial Council elections. Vos calls it exciting. ‘How do you join? How do you ensure that a new team starts working together?’ What Vos also wonders is to what extent it is still useful to talk about the contrast between left and right: ‘Is this what Holland is waiting for at a time when we are really full of crisis? No, the Netherlands is waiting for more cooperation, for people to look each other in the eye again and for us to solve the problems.’

Differences magnified

According to Vos, the differences are “greatly magnified.” He doesn’t deny the differences, but wants to focus on problem solving. ‘We see this cabinet struggling to make decisions. This can be seen in the nitrogen dossier, but also, for example, in the labor market. There is obviously a big difference in ideology and image of humanity between, for example, the VVD and the PvdA. The VVD trusts people less than the PvdA would like to. The VVD has a different idea of ​​taxes and the structure of society than the PvdA.’

The Netherlands faces countless problems, the biggest of which is housing, says Vos. And that has to do with a whole chain of other problems. But if you can’t live affordably, as too many people do right now, then you can’t function either.’ However, Vos points out that the housing problem is closely related to two other problems: climate and nitrogen. “Because if you don’t solve the nitrogen problem, you can’t build.”

Bad debate

And so Vos returns to the apparent contradiction: housing and asylum policy as related by JA21’s Annabel Nanninga. “That’s typically a false dichotomy that really spoils the debate.” According to Vos, this distracts from the real problem: too few houses, too few buildings, the nitrogen problem. “So I think the asylum issue is really an issue in the debate.”

Listen

What politicians should do more of: ‘Listen, listen, listen. When I listen to people from the neighborhood, or if you listen to farmers who really just want to farm normally, for example, they often contain solutions to problems that you can’t find in The Hague. I think this should be the agenda for the next few years and also for the provinces. And then it turns out that much more can be done. Only that there are rules of the way, rules based on distrust».

Mistrust = rules

According to Vos, the rules are the result of a suspicious government. “I have noticed that distrust is at the heart of many rules. Lots of rules in healthcare, so people looking to work in healthcare only look at what they did every five minutes. You see it in education, in childcare, which means it’s not fun to work in childcare anymore. You can see this now with the claims management in Groningen, in the handling of the child benefit issue.’

eliminate

According to Vos, we spend 70 percent of our time playing the rules because of distrust. If GroenLinks and PvdA have a say, that will change, she says. she hopes. ‘Finally a different management culture, I hope, which is that we start from the good in people and we could let go of many rules. For example, that we have communities, farmers in villages, that we let them find their own solutions for a while.’

Left-wing parties will also abolish legislation on health care, as well as education. In education, the left wants to “let teachers do what they are good at”. And then I hope to notice that we need a lot less agencies organizing self-employed in education or self-employed in health, for example, because it’s good to work in health again.’

Hear BNR’s full Big Five conversation here