Paul Schnabel thinks the Germans look at the Dutch way of doing things to see how they can improve on it.

It’s not often Der Spiegel writes about the Netherlands. And when it does it’s never about something that has attracted attention here but is regarded by our neighbours as something ‘skurril’, or something odd or even completely weird. The Germans still think of the Netherlands as some sort of social laboratory in which things are tested which may, by and by and in a much more orderly fashion, be introduced in their own country. According to political affiliation these things are looked at with admiration, astonishment or indignation.
Ayaan
Recently the Netherlands figured four times in the pages of Der Spiegel, that is if Ayaan Hirsi Ali can be said to pertain to the Netherlands. Her photograph is shown in an article about Sabatina James, a Muslim who has made no secret of her conversion to Christianity. Like Ayaan, the equally beautiful Sabatina has lived in fear of her life since. She is openly protesting against the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries and thinks western countries should do the same.
Much more innocent, or so it seems, is the news that princess Máxima, also resplendent in a photograph, is going to follow in the footsteps of her Spanish and British counterparts and tell the taxpayers how much of their money goes on hats and frocks. It’s not an altogether innocent titbit because it is the next step in the de-institutionalisation of the monarchy. The emperor’s new clothes are being paid for with money from the public purse and the public wants to know what it says on the tag.
Deetman report
Der Spiegel didn’t know then how the Catholic church in the Netherlands was to loose face and dignity because of the Deetman report. But there’s a good chance it won’t mention the issue at all seeing that reports of cases of child sexual abuse by people of the cloth in Germany have been rife in the past few years.
Nothing out of the ordinary there then but the same isn’t true of the work of the ‘church liquidator of Utrecht’. This is about Marc de Beyer, responsible for the proper management of churches which have closed down. Some hundred do every year and it is his task to decide on the future of the furniture, consecrated and non consecrated. What should go to a museum or to another church, what can be sold at auction and what is best destroyed? De Beyer has written some guidelines which will have to be consulted by many a church board: the next ten to twenty years will see the closure of at least half of all Catholic churches. Germany isn’t there yet but already churches are struggling.
al-Galidi
I have never read anything by Rodaan al-Galidi and yet he has written twelve books and recently received he European Union prize for literature from the hands of princess Laurentien. Rodaan is a refugee from Iraq who has lived in the Netherlands for a long time and writes in Dutch. But he isn’t a Dutch national because he has failed the integration test. He didn’t know when a woman starts menstruating again after a miscarriage and how much childcare costs. Der Spiegel writes it all down without a single comment. But it makes for uncomfortable reading all the same.
Paul Schnabel is head of the government’s social policy unit SCP