International

You would hardly expect it in a week when the European Parliament also voted to back the new laws on European economic governance, but last Friday Commission officials confirmed that they were intending to interfere less in the work of local and regional authorities. This principally concerns the obligatory tender process and accusations of unjustified state aid. Tomorrow I intend to put these promises to the test, by asking the Commission if it is in agreement with the raising of the income threshold for social housing so that people earning €33.000-€43.000 per annum can be considered for social rented apartments and houses.

I have often had positive things to say about the internal market, although we have also in the past had a great deal to say on the subject which was critical. The problem is in particular that the rules of the internal market were laid down in such a way that local and regional authorities were forced to open up to the market via complicated tendering procedures. In the election campaign in 2009 we offered the example of Amsterdam. When the city council wanted to open a bicycle storage facility and workshop staffed by ex-prisoners, this met in the first instance with resistance from the European Commission, which found the scheme to be in conflict with the principle of unbridled competition, because commercial firms would have no opportunity to win the contract.

It is this sort of micro-management which local and regional authorities find so burdensome, but it looks as if this is now going to change. During a seminar in Brussels at which I was invited to speak last week by the Commission, it emerged that they are serious about putting an end to this sort of meddling. We will of course need to keep an eye on local authorities to ensure that they are not prone to nepotism, and we must drive out corruption. That is, however, an entirely different matter from standing in the way of a council which considers social or environmental issues more important in awarding a contract than a low price. There will now be space for this.

Meanwhile housing associations and local authorities have had a great deal of trouble from an agreement on social housing which the last Dutch government made with the Commission, to the effect that such rental accommodation could be offered only to people earning less than €33.000 p.a. Again, this was to enable the greatest possible degree of competition, yet everyone knows that it is impossible, certainly for a first-time buyer, to buy a house if you don’t earn at least €43.000 annually. My SP colleague Sadet Karabulut, a Member of Parliament in The Hague, asked Home Affairs Minister Piet Hein Donner to renegotiate this income threshold. Despite the SP position having the support of the whole Parliament, he refused her request, and that’s why tomorrow I am going to talk about the matter with a couple of Commission officials. If the Commission really wants to be less interfering, should they be regulating things in this way?