The VVD has presented its draft election programme. The title is Give Space. Define borders. The party of party leader Dilan Yesilgöz mentions getting a grip on migration as the first concrete point. That is the subject on which the Rutte IV cabinet fell.
Yesilgöz said at the presentation that the reason why she is in politics is “freedom”. She stated that in order to live in freedom, boundaries must be set. This concerns, among other things, the number of refugees that are received and the number of labor migrants that are brought to the Netherlands.
The new leader of the VVD believes that “the oxygen seems to disappear from society, that the rules are suffocating us, that we are suffocating each other”. She wants “breathing room” to be created again. “That means that people must be given the freedom to arrange their own lives, to be able to live decently and to be able to walk the streets safely”.
Subsistence security
Other measures that the party wants to take are lowering taxes on workers and lowering energy taxes. This should also lead to people with an average income no longer thinking “at the end of the month: will I make it?”
In other words, the VVD wants to work for the social security of “hard-working Dutch people” and is therefore the third party that has this theme high on its agenda. Pieter Omtzigt and the combination GroenLinks/PvdA also focus on “security of existence”. But where they use that word, it does not appear literally in the VVD election programme.
Nitrogen emissions
The VVD says in the election program that nitrogen emissions must be halved by 2035, as stated in the law. The coalition had brought that deadline forward by five years in the coalition agreement, to 2030. The party is now moving away from that.
The election program is not yet final. At the VVD congress on September 23, the members still have to agree to it.
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