Dutch Press Review Thursday 3 May 2012
Ajax are champions - the Amsterdam club ends top of the Dutch soccer league. Details of last week’s 2013 cuts deal are only just emerging, Dutch savers think the euro may fall and the traditional barrel organ becomes a topic for research.
‘We are the champions!’
Today’s big news is the clinching by Ajax of the national football championship for the second year running. The Amsterdam club wasn’t playing in a nail-biting championship match - no it was just their penultimate Premier League game, against VVV Venlo. They won 2-0, securing enough points to be assured of the league’s number one spot again this year.
Trouw says it was a boring match, “nothing like sparkling” and never even exciting. “We were often too careless,” mid-fielder Theo Janssen admits. However, the mood in the ArenA, Ajax' home ground, was good, the paper tells us, with Ajax trainer Frank de Boer getting a lot of justified praise from the crowd.
De Telegraaf describes the scene of triumph as the Premier League trophy was passed around the Ajax players. Last year, we’re reminded, Jan Vertonghen dropped the huge ornate silver plate out of the bus in which the team was being paraded through Amsterdam. This year he dropped it on his foot.
“Me and the trophy don’t get on,” he explains. “It’s not got a dent in it though [as it did last year after its fall from the bus] - it’s my toe that’s got the dent.”
AD highlights the plight of those fans not able to get a seat. “Of course, I’d rather have been in the stadium,” says one, “but a season ticket’s too dear for me.” Instead, he joined the massed Ajax fans in Amsterdam’s Leidse Square.
Big outdoor screens to transmit the match had been banned for fear of trouble, but the night passed off peacefully, we’re told. Whether the same will go for this evening’s official celebration outside the ArenA, remains to be seen.
An opinion piece in de Volkskrant says it’s no coincidence that, since soccer legend Johan Cruiff openly started to get involved in his old club in September 2010, Ajax has won the championship twice. It says he gave a rudderless Ajax – which at the time hadn’t won a title for seven years – the much-needed slap in the face that woke everyone up.
Cuts deal ‘too vague’
NRC Handelsblad reports that last week’s last-minute deal between the outgoing minority government and three opposition parties on the 2013 budget is too vague to be financially assessed by the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB).
The deal put together a raft of cutbacks and reforms designed to bring down the 2013 budget deficit to the European Union limit of three percent of gross domestic product (GDP). It was drawn up in less than two days after the surprise fall of the government and just before the EU deadline of 30 April. The Netherlands would have risked an enormous fine if the deadline had been missed.
Without the CPB’s independent assessment of how much the deal will save the treasury, it is impossible to gauge its effect on purchasing power, unemployment and the like, explains NRC. The good news is that the European Commission doesn’t require independent assessment of the figures.
Trouw picks up on some of the confusion around the deal. It has only just come to light that the agreement scrapped the government’s earlier and highly unpopular plan to cut ‘social work places’ – jobs with special support for people with disabilities.
When the 2013 budget deal was debated in parliament last week, Labour put forward that the social work places should not be cut. The parties behind the deal, however, voted against the Labour motion. It now appears that they had already got rid of the unpopular measure in the small print of their agreement with the government.
Nice little earner?
A piece in de Volkskrant informs us that the Dutch are increasingly transferring their savings into other currencies because of the fear that the euro may fall.
Dutch central bank figures show that, since “the beginning of the crisis at the end of 2007”, the amount of Dutch residents’ savings in Swiss francs has doubled, in Japanese yen has quadrupled, in US dollars has increased by 25 percent and in British pounds has gone up by 40 percent.
In March 2012, the Dutch had collective savings of 818 billion euros but, the paper hastens to assure us, this included capital from pension funds. Of the savings not held in euros, most was in US dollars, some 33.8 billions’ worth.
Over recent years, the high costs of holding savings in foreign currencies have been more than compensated by exchange-rate profits. We’re told the Swiss franc, the Norwegian krone and Swedish krona have done especially well. However, as de Volkskrant warns, these profits can just as quickly turn into losses.
Nostalgia or noise?
De Telegraaf finds place on its front page to ask what influence the traditional Dutch barrel organ has on shoppers. The University of Twente is launching a research project to answer the question once and for all.
The highly colourful organs are still a common sight – and sound - in Dutch shopping streets. Do people get happily nostalgic when they hear the jangling tunes, possibly more willing in the process to part with their cash, or do they become irritable as the organs grind endlessly on?
A street organ enthusiast tells the paper that an earlier survey in Enschede indicated that “93 percent” of shoppers were in favour of barrel organs in the city centre. “But we’re eager to have this result backed up by academic research.”