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The Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP) calls on political parties to make clear choices and not make unrealistic promises in the run -up to the parliamentary elections at the end of October. In campaign time, according to the SCP, it is tempting for politicians to promise more than they can live up to. But the risk is that it will only be affected by low confidence in politics.
In a memorandum published today, which the parties can use in writing their election programs and in the subsequent reign, the Planning Bureau mentions the asylum and migration policy as one of the examples. In politics there is a tendency to pretend that it can all be combined: limit immigration, respect international agreements such as the UN refugee treaty and take up the labor migrants who needs the economy.
However, reality is a lot more complicated. “Too great promises of politicians about the extent to which the government can steer on migration, encourages cynicism and puts pressure on the relationship between government and citizen,” says SCP researcher Willem Huijnk.
‘Complex problems do not have one solution’
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In their memorandum, Huijnk and his colleagues note that the quality of life of many Dutch people is high compared to many other countries. At the same time, there are “major challenges”, such as aging, staff shortages, climate change, immigration and artificial intelligence. Many people think that the country is going in the wrong direction and are concerned about the way of living together, the lack of affordable living space, rising prices and politics. Extra money will go to safety and defense in the coming years, but that threatens to be at the expense of solutions for other social problems for which money is needed.
That is why, according to the Social and Cultural Planning Office, it is now essential to make sharp, realistic political choices and to explain very clearly to voters what is feasible and what is not. Because not only broken promises, but also “the tendency in politics to reduce complex problems to one cause and therefore also one solution” lead to distrust in the longer term if it turns out that those solutions are in reality not that simple at all.
In the eyes of the SCP, these political choices should focus in particular on a number of “social tasks”, including the stacking of arrears in certain groups, which are sometimes passed on from generation to generation. The Planning Bureau also insists on the importance of increasing the resilience of society, just outside of crisis.
‘Do more than laying dikes’
“If you want to cope with a big crisis in the future, then it is not enough to purchase an emergency package and take technical measures as an increase in the dikes,” says researcher Huijnk. “It is also important that we strengthen the social cohesion in our country and in our communities. So that people get to know each other, meet each other and want to do something for each other in time.”
Other important points that the Planning Bureau mentions are clear choices in the increasingly expensive care, a fair climate policy and good governance that listens to people and weighs conflicting interests. In addition, it is still important to work on livelihood, among other things by simplifying the benefit system and preventing people from no longer finding the way through all the counters and regulations.
Tone
One of the red threads in the advice of the SCP is the importance of meeting and cooperation, both in society and in politics. “The enlargement of differences between groups and the sometimes downright hostile and hard tone of politicians do not contribute to this,” says Huijnk.
