Dutch Press Review Tuesday 8 May 2012

Today’s newspapers look deeper at the impact of the French and Greek elections on Europe and on the Netherlands from myriad angles but reach a similar conclusion: the financial crisis has become a crisis in democracy. And now that spending is allowed again, there’s a new product for the fair-minded: ‘good gold’. Nijmegen is the new drug tourism hub and one journalist hits out at Moroccan racism.
EU democracy: free to choose the course of your demise
“In a democracy it’s the people who determine which course their country takes. But the only course the Greeks can decide on now is that of their demise,” writes de Volkskrant.
Last November, democracy in the eurozone seemed to be neutered as member states got rid of elected leaders and swore in technocrats to deliver a done deal negotiated in Brussels and Berlin. “The irony is that because of the lack of democracy at European level, European agreements are seen as prescriptive meddling from outside...The only way to get a grip on the situation is to change the EU’s financial structure into a political one – the United States of Europe,” proposes a columnist in de Volkskrant.

“Merkollande is already being cultivated,” headlines NRC Handelsblad, which shows the fragility of the new affair in an illustration. Angela Merkel is in the form of a piggy bank, with a sardonic look on her face - like a woman who’s just entered an arranged marriage. Her new DIY husband lurches around in a suit wielding a hammer as he tries to repair the cracks in the piggy bank with plasters.

After Hollande, Holland “will also fight a strong campaign in forthcoming elections to end Brussels’ intrusiveness. By making Europe the enemy, the Eurosceptics are bringing us nearer an unmanageable euro crisis,” warns de Volkskrant. Its front page shows a blue ‘three percent’ graphic – the EU deficit norm – sink into a hazy sea.

After coffee and bananas, Fairtrade goes for gold
“One day you’re sweating days on end in a Peruvian gold mine, the next day you’re like a film star surrounded by photographers and camera crews in Amsterdam North. Yesterday, it happened to Santiago Ramírez, freshly flown in from Peru, who handed over the first official ‘good gold’ bracelet” to a famous Dutch actress, writes Trouw.

First it was Max Havelaar coffee in 1988, launching the first Fairtrade label to the Dutch consumer in a move to do – fair - business directly with the producers. Then came Oké bananas in 1996.

Now it’s gold with the hallmark Fairtrade & Fairmined. If you decide to buy ‘fair’ gold jewellery for your spouse’s birthday, it’ll cost you three to five percent more, but “the campaign aims to improve the lives of some 20 million people in the artisanal gold mining sector.”

“The choice is now in the hands of the consumer,” says Nico Roozen, chief of Dutch development agency Solidaridad, who was involved in the launch of coffee brand Max Havelaar (a fictional Dutch colonial character who wanted to help the native coffee pickers) in the 1980s. “Fairtrade brand coffee and bananas now have a five to ten percent market share. And the consumers who don’t choose Fairtrade products are at least familiar with the brand name.”

Good gold still has a long way to go, if a film shown in an affluent Amsterdam shopping street during the launch is anything to go by. “Good gold? What’s that? Fourteen or 18 carats?”
“You need at least ten years for campaign like this. We’ve been busy for three years with gold, so we’ve another seven to go,” says Roozen. He wants 2.5 percent of all gold production to be ‘fair’ by the end of the year.

No tears for Moroccan ‘nigger whore’
On 26 March, a pregnant woman was walking in Amsterdam with her boyfriend when they were attacked by a group of ethnic Moroccan youths. The woman then suffered a miscarriage. “Reason for the assault: she was also of Moroccan origin and her boyfriend was black,” explains de Volkskrant.
The attack got little coverage in the media. It was reported in Amsterdam’s local newspaper, Het Parool, and then got picked up by a web blog, GeenStijl.

“If you read something like this, it makes your hair stand up on end and you wonder where’s the collective anger about this racist assault? Where are the screams for justice for this cowardly murder of an unborn child? Where are the columns raging about this disgusting deed of racism?” asks Bart Schut in de Volkskrant.
Schut, who used to work for Moroccan weekly Telquel, agrees with the blog that things would be very different had it been five white Dutch men who had “attacked the women in broad daylight about 50 metres away from the Netherlands’ national war memorial in Amsterdam’s Dam Square because she is a ‘nigger whore’.”

Moroccans have a racism problem, concludes Schut, who has personal experience of racism with his ethnic Moroccan girlfriend. Schut also recounts the racism against Berbers in Morocco, and, as most Moroccans in the Netherlands are of Berber origin, he appeals to them to “think twice about judging others on the colour of their skin.”

Where the hell is Nijmegen?
Ever heard of Nijmegen? It’s the new hub of Dutch tourism – drug tourism. “Weed users have found the way to Nijmegen – en masse,” reports De Telegraaf.

Since 1 May, southern towns have enforced a new soft drugs law, which limits their sale to Dutch residents. But Belgians and Germans can still buy their soft drugs in the eastern city of Nijmegen without the so-called ‘weed pass’. And the Dutchies themselves “who don’t want to be a registered drug user” are also making the trip.

“Last week someone phoned me from Kaiserslautern, nearly 400 kilometres away to ask if we were open that evening,” says a coffeeshop owner in Nijmegen’s centre. “They don’t care if they have to drive really far, they’ll still come.”

The idea for the weed pass originated in the southern border city of Maastricht a few years ago. The city was tired of the disturbance from the estimated 1.5 million foreigners per year coming just to buy soft drugs from the city's 19 coffeeshops.

De Telegraaf also reports on new disturbances from illegal streets sales in Venlo - “a tsunami of drug runners” - since the closures. A sign of what’s to come when the rest of the Netherlands follows suit on 1 January 2013?