Rising passions in the Netherlands over the new Greek rescue package will come to a head next week at an emergency session of parliament, which reconvenes to question the terms of the July deal agreed in Brussels.
Opinion polls show the Dutch public firmly opposed to further aid for Greece or more contributions to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) bail-out fund. And with a parliamentary vote on the Greek rescue package scheduled for September, political parties who earlier backed euro zone aid measures are increasingly uncertain whether they can take the heat.
"My basic sense is that there is still a majority for the rescue package," parliamentarian Wouter Koolmees of the left-liberal opposition D66 party told the Financial Times. "But there's a huge pile of irritation, especially among the opposition parties that have supported it, over the way the government has presented things."
Critics say the government has misleadingly played down the consequences of rescue packages for the Dutch taxpayer.
Immediately after the euro zone summit, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the initial €109-billion ($153-billion) portion of the Greek deal included €50-billion in so-called "private-sector involvement," or markdowns and extensions on Greek debt held by private creditors. But the claim was incorrect – the €50-billion in private-sector involvement was separate and additional to the €109-billion, as the finance ministry later acknowledged.
But Mr. Rutte has yet to admit that he made a mistake. The Dutch, along with the Germans, had pressed hard in Brussels for a high level of private-sector involvement to assuage taxpayers and it was widely felt that Mr. Rutte had tried to paint too rosy a picture of the deal.
That provoked the ire of opposition parties, whose support the government needs on this issue. The government – led by Mr. Rutte's Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats of Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager – owes its majority to the far-right Party for Freedom, which opposes all aid to Greece. The government must rely on the Labour Party, D66, and the Green-Left Party to push euro zone support packages through parliament.
Tensions came to a head this week when parliament's finance committee met with the top civil servant in the finance ministry to go over the details of the Greek rescue package. Why, he was asked, had Mr. Rutte refused to clarify his error? Why had the government told parliament before the summit that the rescue package would amount to just €85-billion, when in fact it turned out to be much larger?
"You go in with a financing gap of €85-billion and you come out with a rescue package for €215-billion," said Tony van Dijck of the Party for Freedom. "So of course people ask: what in God's name are they up to?"
Parliamentarians are annoyed by the sense that they are being forced to explain the government's mistakes to hostile voters. In recent surveys by pollster Maurice de Hond, respondents strongly reject any effort to broaden the EFSF to protect Spain and Italy. Most strikingly, by a margin of 56 per cent to 39 per cent, respondents said they wished the Netherlands had never joined the euro.
"Clearly, there is an erosion of trust," says Ronald Plasterk, a Labour Party member. "The cabinet consistently refuses to tell the complete story. They're trying to keep their Party for Freedom coalition friends satisfied and their voters happy."
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.