One more week and Dutch politicians will be off to the south of France or a campsite on the Veluwe national park for a quick respite before campaigning begins in earnest for the September 12 general election. Last weekend, five parties presented their manifestos and candidates. What the papers say.

In its analysis, the Volkskrant zooms in on each party leader’s ‘favourite enemy’.
‘Emile Roemer accused prime minister Rutte of leaving the country ‘in a big mess’, and said the Socialist Party will clear it up’, the paper writes. Labour’s Diederik Samsom had a go at Roemer for ‘spreading a rumour about printing money (by the Central European bank, to give to southern European countries, DN) to solve the problems. ‘Stop telling fairy tales, Emile’, Samsom told the SP leader.
Christian Democrat leader Sybrand van Haersma Buma didn’t pick on anyone in particular. He doesn’t really dislike anyone, although ‘there are too many cutbacks on the right and too few on the left’, he is quoted as saying.
Arie Slob (ChristenUnie) ‘sees populist tendencies in Mark Rutte’. Green party GroenLinks leader Jolande Sap makes no distinctions at all: according to the Volkskrant she thinks none of her colleagues are any good at all. Sap even wanted Rutte to ‘step down immediately’.
The Big Two
So no surprises there. None of the parties wants a long campaign, least of all ‘the Big Two’. ‘Mark Rutte and Emile Roemer don’t want the campaign proper to start until late August,’ the Volkskrant states.
‘A longer campaign could open the door to incidents. Rutte and Roemer are each others favourite opponents and they will do anything to turn this election into a battle between just the two of them, with Rutte as the protector of the country’s finances against the big spenders of the SP and Roemer as the defender of the victims of the VVD’s iron financial grip’.
The Volkskrant doesn’t really see any chances for the other party leaders to break up the twosome. ‘Rutte and Roemer seem untouchable’, the paper concludes.
Be reasonable
Trouw writes that ‘the political centre has to concentrate on the voters who are still open to reason’.
‘Be reasonable’ is the plea from the Christian Democrats, the PvdA, GroenLinks and the ChristenUnie. It’s their only chance of stealing votes from the anti-immigration PVV, the VVD and the SP, the paper writes.
Europe will be an important election issue, Trouw states. ‘It will be convenient to characterise Rutte as the political leader who, with complete disregard for Dutch interests, has his foot on the brakes on Europe. Now that the PVV is campaigning to get the Netherlands out of Europe, the political centre has become more European than ever.
‘Roemer’s remark about printing more money to get the southern European countries out of trouble will have helped. The Christian Democrats in particular are becoming increasingly more pro-European’, the paper continues.
Trouw also thinks the battle will be between Roemer and Rutte, with the other party leaders looking despondently on.