DutchNews Podcast

French president Emmanuel Macron was confronted by protests and tough questions on his relations with China on his state visit to The Hague, but the Dutch language turned out to be his biggest adversary. Farmers' party BBB looks set to shut out D66 from provincial government as tensions grow in the coalition on its nitrogen policy. Schiphol airport presses on with plans to cut the number of flight...

A carousel of rubbish this week as Amsterdam imports 900 tonnes of waste from Rome while launching a campaign to keep out trashed British tourists. Mark Rutte promises to listen better to voters as he tries to save his government from the scrapheap, while Wopke Hoekstra tries to salvage his credibility by finding common ground with BBB leader Caroline van der Plas. Sex workers protest against bein...

The polder system is being hollowed out and threatens to go off the rails at any moment. Yes, those pesky badgers have been building their setts under railway lines and forced NS to cancel some trains. Meanwhile, the Christian Democrats lick their wounds at a corporate hotel near Utrecht as the coalition parties continue to reel from the aftershocks of the BBB's electoral coup. Feyenoord and the D...

We digest the results of a bombshell election that turned the Senate, the provincial houses and the water boards upside down and the flags the right way up. Are the nitrogen reduction plans in disarray? Who will the BoerBurgerBeweging team up with in the provinces? And can Mark Rutte live to fight another round on Vandaag Inside? The war in Ukraine and the pandemic turn out to be good news for the...

This week we do our best to explain how next week's elections work (shout out to the water boards!), why the TV debates are between politicians who aren't standing in them and why Mark Rutte is shadow boxing with a 'leftist cloud'. Justice minister Dilan Yesilgöz is under pressure over failures in the crown witness protection system. The European Medicines Agency is displeased about the personal t...

The systematic failure to protect Groningen residents from earthquakes and witnesses in gangland trials from being murdered in broad daylight were laid bare in two damning reports this week. We unearth the village scandal behind a portrait painted by Vincent van Gogh shortly before he left his native Brabant. Inflation rises again as the official statistics agency discovers it overcooked the figur...

Unfortunately there is no regular episode this week because in a freakish coincidence the entire DutchNews podcast team is away and we promise this has nothing to do with the ten Russian spies who were expelled from the Netherlands on Tuesday. As a compensation, we release last summer's special episode for Patreon supporters in which we don't discuss the news, but rather a number of fascinating st...

After relying on the Netherlands to help them beat the taxman, U2 appropriately hire a Dutchman to beat the drums for them in Las Vegas. There's more smashing news on the tennis court, where two home-based players reach the quarter-finals of the ABN AMRO tournament. The VVD wins the race to become the first party to pull out of an election debate this year as Mark Rutte's strategy unravels. Celebr...

Dutch rescue workers join the international team searching the rubble of this week's earthquake in Turkey and Syria for survivors. Back home, Mark Rutte surveys the wreckage of his asylum policy as the Council of State throws out a rule delaying family reunions. The team investigating the MH17 disaster say the chain of command went all the way up to Vladimir Putin. We ask if Dutch cheese and Belgi...

The distant goal of putting Russia on trial for invading Ukraine moves a step closer as a dedicated prosecutor's office is set up in The Hague. Mark Rutte avoids a diplomatic incident as he takes French president Emmanuel Macron out to an Indonesian restaurant. The Dutch and German armies look set to integrate further, though there's bound to be a row about who owns the bicycles. Questions are ask...

A feast of ophef this week as the widow of singer André Hazes sues a juice channel presenter who called her a 'gecremeerd kroket' while Belgium's prime minister gets his flags in a twist. Richard de Mos rolls up in a garish stretch limousine for the start of his trial, where he's accused of running a criminal network in the heart of The Hague. The government promises to send more tanks and weapons...

Mark Rutte went to Washington this week and said the Netherlands would definitely send some weapons to Ukraine at an unspecified time in the near future. Mayors in three cities suggested digital banning orders to curb gang violence, even though they don't know what they are, how they'd work or whether they're even legal. Good news on the energy front as gas prices start to come down and Geert Wild...

2023 gets off to a shaky start with Gert-Jan Segers stepping down as leader of the ChristenUnie party. The cabinet's plans to control immigration come unstuck in court, forcing asylum minister Eric van der Burg to kick the latest measures into the long grass. The looming recession has puts a dampener on the housing market as prices decline after nine years. One commodity that's apparently impervio...

It's that time of year when we look back over those fleeting flare-ups of outrage and opprobrium that feature in the Ophef of the Week slot. Relive obscure controversies such as the celebrity who took her own mob to the supermarket. Recall the overpriced phone booths in the ministry of horrors. Do you remember which Belgian club was condemned for appointing an over-exposed former football director...

Sigrid Kaag is dispatched to Paramaribo as the cabinet's efforts to apologise for the Dutch slave trade fly into a whirlwind of recriminations. Back home, Wopke Hoekstra is shocked – shocked! – by a report exposing institutional racism at the foreign affairs ministry. Dutch Moroccan footballers, meanwhile, have no regrets as they eclipse Louis van Gaal's Oranje at the World Cup. Gas supplies look...

The cabinet makes a sorry spectacle of itself this week as its attempts to apologise for slavery come apart at the seams. Rabobank, a co-operative bank set up to lend to farmers, is suspected of getting its hands dirty with money laundering, financing terrorism and rigging bond deals. As the economy cools, Dutch households turn down the thermostat and tighten their belts in anticipation of a 4% dr...

A week totally devoid of plot twists includes another farmers' protest, a pre-nuptial agreement between GroenLinks and PvdA, and a warning from the AIVD that Russia and China might be spying on us. There's a double dose of ophef as sports minister Conny Helder leaves parliament early to fly to Qatar, then says 'never mind' to the desert state's human rights record. As Oranje sleepwalk into the Wor...

Inflation is a growing problem, and not just for the Oranje fan who was kicked out of a Qatari stadium this week for accessorising his rainbow armband with a pair of false breasts. Brussels tells finance minister Sigrid Kaag to redo her budget arithmetic as fears of a recession deepen. The Dutch government makes farmers an offer they can't refuse to settle the nitrogen crisis. The Bible Belt becom...

Eight years after the shooting down of flight MH17 over Ukraine, three men are given life sentences for the murder of the 298 passengers and crew. The reality of the ongoing war was brought home for Wopke Hoekstra, who had to take shelter from Russian missiles on a visit to Kyiv. The war is also set to push the Netherlands into a recession by the end of the year, but economists are hopeful of a re...

Mark Rutte took a flight out of Egypt this week to fend off a mutiny in his party on asylum. It's not just the wolves that are feasting in Gelderland as a restaurant in Nijmegen is named the best place in the world for plant-based cuisine. The government still can't decide on a new pension scheme, and you'll have to wait longer to claim it anyway after the retirement age goes up again. Louis van G...

Early November is traditionally a fruitful time for conspiracy theorists, as Guy Fawkes, David Icke and Rian van Rijbroek will testify. The RIVM admits it mixed up its numbers on nitrogen pollution just as the Council of State tells the government to redo its homework on building permits. Dutch railway operator NS cuts services and raises ticket prices, but insist it's still the only company fit t...

This week, we look at two instances of climate activism in the Netherlands and ask why the superglue does not seem to work. Asylum minister Eric van der Burg's troubles continue as local councils give him yet another ultimatum about sorting out the mess of where refugees should sleep. House prices are falling and interest rates are up so no hope of much helpful happening on the housing market. Dut...

Wopke Hoekstra says Netherlands needs a 'constructive' relationship with gas-rich Qatar as he rejects parliament's calls to boycott the upcoming World Cup. Let's hope the relationship is constructed more carefully than the stadiums for the tournament, which cost the lives of thousands of migrant workers. Asylum minister Erik van der Burg is caught between a rock and a hard place after a court orde...

Inflation will stay high until next year, house prices are cooling and there's a wave of bankruptcies on the way. 2023 looks like a good year to hide under the bedsheets, which might have inspired one prisoner this week to execute a traditional-style escape. The Groningen gas inquiry continues, but not even the collective force of a thousand earthquakes can jog Mark Rutte's active memory. And Amst...

Johan Remkes, the government's polder tsar, works his magic again as Dutch farmers cautiously welcome his plan to buy out up to 600 of the biggest nitrogen polluters - essentially the same plan that sparked two years of furious protest. There seems little hope of reconciliation between Khadija Arib and her successor as chair of parliament, Vera Bergkamp, after Arib quits as an MP and accuses Bergk...