Dutch vote in election set to be dominated by pro-European parties

Polls show Liberals and Labour ahead, dispelling concerns radical eurosceptics might gain sway in a core eurozone country

Mainstream pro-European parties look set to dominate the Dutch parliamentary election on Wednesday, dispelling concerns that radical eurosceptics might gain sway in a core eurozone country and push to quit the European Union or flout its budget rules.

But the Netherlands is likely to remain an awkward, tough-talking member of the single currency area, strongly resisting transfers to eurozone debtors, regardless of whether prime minister Mark Rutte's Liberals or the centre-left Labour party of Diederik Samsom win the most seats.

Opinion polls on Tuesday showed the Liberals and Labour on 36 seats each or the Liberals fractionally in front, with the hard-left Socialists and the far-right anti-immigration Freedom party fading in third and fourth place respectively.

That makes it more likely, though not certain, that Rutte, with the strongest international profile, will stay as prime minister.

Early morning commuters at Amsterdam's central train station were among the first to vote.

Maike Stukkeheim, an artist, said: "I had a hard time choosing who to vote for, in the end I voted Socialists. I don't particularly like them but I wanted to vote left. I think it's (the political landscape0 getting more and more rightwing, more conservative."

The final days of campaigning turned into a two-horse race between Rutte, 45, a former Unilever human resources manager dubbed the "Teflon" prime minister because of his ability to brush off disasters, and the energetic Samsom, 41, an ex-Greenpeace activist whose debating flair wowed voters.

Both parties have played down talk that they will end up in coalition, together with one or two smaller parties, but parliamentary arithmetic suggests this is the most probable outcome given a highly fragmented political landscape.

But about a fifth of the 12.5 million voters say they are undecided, leaving room for surprises.

The Netherlands is one of the few triple-A rated countries left in Europe and a longstanding ally of Germany in demanding strict adherence to fiscal discipline. The vote is seen as a barometer of northern European stamina both for austerity and for bailouts to keep the single currency bloc intact.

Thrifty Dutch taxpayers are frustrated by demands for belt-tightening at home, particularly the steady erosion of their cherished welfare state and pensions, while stumping up billions of euros to rescue what they see as profligate budget sinners.

"People have become negative about Europe because we give so much money to Greece and other countries and at the same time we are aware of the fact that we badly need money here to pay for schools, for the army and everything," Jaap Paauwe, a professor of management at Tilburg University, told Reuters.

With the focus on the eurozone crisis and its impact on the domestic economy, Europe took centre-stage during the campaign.

Employers' groups representing big businesses such as electronics giant Philips as well as small and medium-sized firms that form the backbone of the economy ran a campaign highlighting the benefits of EU membership.

The main employers' group hung a banner outside its head office in The Hague proclaiming: "Vote for Europe and your job."

In a pamphlet distributed to voters entitled "The Netherlands earns its living from Europe", business groups said the export-dependent economy would lose €90bn (£72bn) a year in sales without the euro and the EU's internal market.

In contrast, one of the biggest unions posted a cartoon on its website showing the electoral battleground as the last chance saloon with caricatures of Rutte and his allies stalking the saloon bars in the wild west.

Fears over Europe initially played in favour of the two main populist parties, particularly the Socialist party which a month ago was either leading or a close second in opinion polls.

The Socialists have waned largely because of the dismal showing of their leader Emile Roemer, a former teacher, in an almost nightly marathon of television debates.

Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-Islam Freedom party which is calling for the Netherlands to quit the euro and the EU, has also lost support.

Some of his followers are disappointed that he squandered his real power as Rutte's chief ally in parliament when he brought down the government in April by refusing to support another package of budget cuts.

• Netherlands
• Europe
• Eurozone crisis
• European Union

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Greeks eye 'war reparations' from Germany as markets await euro ruling

Telegraph.co.uk

Greeks eye 'war reparations' from Germany as markets await euro ruling Telegraph.co.uk The Greek government has dedicated four officials to raking over the archives from the period of German occupation, which lasted from 1941 to 1945, according to the newsgroup ekathimerini.com. “The matter remains pending," it quoted deputy finance ... Euro Crisis Faces Tests in German Court, Greek InfightingSan Francisco Chronicle New package of Greek budget cuts questioned by the TroikaFXstreet.com all 2,321 news articles »

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François Hollande and Angela Merkel meet in Paris with high stakes at play

Franco-German discussions need to build 'a concrete path' for Europe, says José Manuel Barroso

Chancellor Angela Merkel goes to Paris on Wednesday to try to strike a Franco-German deal with President François Hollande amid deep-seated differences at what has been described as Europe's defining moment.

With the two key EU countries split for the first time in 30 months of single currency and sovereign debt crisis, José Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission laid bare the high stakes in play at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday as well as the high frictions between Germany and France.

Merkel's first visit to the Élysée Palace under its new occupant has been hastily arranged and comes on the eve of what is being billed as a crucial Brussels summit which, apart from the immediate financial dilemmas, is to wrestle with a radical blueprint aimed at turning the 17 countries of the eurozone into a fully-fledged political federation within a decade.

"We must articulate the vision of where Europe must go, and a concrete path for how to get there," warned Barroso. But he was unsure "whether the urgency of this is fully understood in all the capitals of the EU".

Since his election last month, France's socialist leader has quickly emerged as the most formidable challenger to German formulas for Europe's salvation after two years of Berlin largely dictating the EU response to the crisis.

Merkel is feeling bruised, having just withstood two unusual attempts by fellow leaders to ambush her and get Berlin to hand over its credit cards to write off what they see as other countries' profligacy.

In Mexico last week at the G20 and then in Rome at two bad-tempered summits in recent days, the Americans and the British – in cahoots with the leaders of France, Spain and Italy – sought to press Merkel into bankrolling fiscal stimulus and bank recapitalisation policies that would cut the vulnerable eurozone countries' cost of borrowing.

"It was all wishful thinking or a political game," said a senior EU official of the ambush attempts. "There are substantial economic and political interests at play. Governments are spinning in their respective interests."

The pressure on Merkel may have backfired and reinforced German resistance to the ideas. The view in Berlin is that Hollande will have to back down amid the relative weakness of the French economy.

The blueprint unveiled on Tuesday calls for a eurozone political federation to be built over a decade entailing four stages. The details are thin and are to be fleshed out by the end of the year by the heads of four of the main European institutions, but the proposals – a response to the Greek drama that erupted 30 months ago and which has engulfed the EU into its most perilous crisis ever – mark the most ambitious European plan since agreement on the single currency was reached at Maastricht 20 years ago.

Thursday marks the start of what will be a long, exhausting, and bruising battle essentially pitting German-led integrationist pressure against French-led protection of sovereign authority and reluctance to cede immense powers over budgets and tax-and-spend policies to Brussels and a new eurozone finance ministry, proposals that also raise fundamental questions about democratic legitimacy in the EU.

To be realised, the "political union" would require a major legal overhaul, reopening EU treaties, endless quarrels, probably a new German constitution and perhaps a referendum in Britain and its departure from the EU.

"These decisions on deeper economic, financial and fiscal integration imply major changes to the way our citizens are governed and to the way their taxes are spent," said Barroso. "This crisis is the biggest threat to all that we have achieved through European construction over the last 60 years… A big leap forward is now needed."

The proposals, likely to expose fundamental splits over Europe's future, will do little to resolve the immediate debt and currency crisis. The hope is that the medium-term master plan will placate the financial markets by demonstrating political resolve to defend the currency at all costs. The risk is that the leaders will appear so divided that the markets might step up their probing of the weaker bits of the eurozone, notably Spain and Italy.

Without a Franco-German accord, the prospects of a damaging summit in Brussels are high. Last week Hollande issued policy proposals for the summit, a growth and jobs pact whose details are anathema to Berlin – the issue of short-term shared eurozone debt leading to full pooled debt, common eurozone guarantees for bank deposits, protectionist measures favouring European manufacturers and bidders for public contracts over outsiders as well as direct eurozone recapitalisation of dodgy banks without increasing national debt levels.

The Germans feel under pressure, but Merkel will court big trouble at home if she yields. A pro-European commentator in Der Spiegel this week suggested she should sacrifice her political career to save Europe and the currency.

There is little chance of that happening. But the German elite is deeply worried about Hollande's France, because of the impact it could have on the German economy's prospects battling the emerging might of China, India or Brazil.

Berlin's angst is that Europe can only be saved and a successful Europe re-established if the two core countries are in harness, that it cannot bear the burden alone, and that if the Franco-German dynamic dissipates, the German economy will be among the biggest victims of failure.

Berlin points to the widening gap in employment costs between Germany and France; a youth unemployment rate in France triple that of Germany; Hollande's first move in reducing the retirement age and France's overall loss of competitiveness over the past decade. It fears being dragged down as a result. The cautious hope is that Hollande will turn out or be forced to be France's Gerhard Schröder, the ex-German chancellor and, like Hollande, a social democrat who executed the economic, welfare, and structural reforms a decade ago that put Germany in its current strong shape.

Hollande heads a socialist party, however, that is a lot less "modernised" than Schröder's SPD or the Labour Party under Blair and which is eternally split over Europe. Hollande's foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, spearheaded the No campaign in the French referendum that sunk the European constitution in 2005.

And the crisis is throwing into sharp relief the basic divisions, particularly on the grand plan being fought over . A crisis that started financially on the EU's periphery, in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, has now shifted politically to the union's heart, the Berlin-Paris axis.

France may baulk at the blueprint being tabled, being deeply reluctant to surrender so much sovereign power to new eurozone authorities, while Germany will only accept the liability for others being thrust on it if the powers are federalised.

A senior EU diplomat intimately involved in the Franco-German dynamic for 20 years says, however, that Merkel and Hollande are condemned to forging a modus operandi and that the stakes are too big.

"Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand were dreadful at the start. They hated each other. Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac was the lowest I ever saw. It's always like this with France and Germany," he said.

"They always represent different positions and then they find a compromise that everyone else agrees with except the UK."

• Eurozone crisis
• European Union
• European monetary union
• Economics
• Banking
• European banks
• Financial crisis
• Financial sector
• Euro
• Europe
• François Hollande
• Angela Merkel
• France
• Germany

Ian Traynor

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Ed Miliband speaks on elected police commissioners: Politics live blog

Rolling coverage of all today's political developments as they happen, including Ed Miliband's speech on elected police commissioners

9.38am: Here are some more Labour police commissioner candidate names from Twitter. I know most of these Twitter acounts and that the information they post is reliable. There are some that I don't know, but I've got no reason to believe that their information is bogus.

Obviously, when I get the full list from Labour, I'll post it.

From JChamberlain

Former Euro MP Simon Murphy is Lab police commissioner candidate for West Mercia, former Minister James Plaskitt candidate for Warwickshire.

From the BBC's Andrew Sinclair

@SteveMorphew confirmed as Labour candidate for police commissioner in Norfolk

Labour police commissioner candidate for Bedfordshire: olly martins; for Cambs: ed murphy

From Paul Richards, a Labour activist

Congratulations to Godfrey Daniel, selected in Sussex to be Labour's candidate for police commissioner #PCC

From the Liverpool Echo's Luke Traynor

Jane Kennedy expected to be named Merseyside Police Commissioner

From the BBC's James Vincent

Shaun Wright - Labour Cllr in Rotherham - has been confirmed as the Labour candidate for Police Commissioner in South Yorkshire

From the South Wales Argus's David Deans

Hamish Sandison is Labour candidate for Gwent Police and Crime Commissioner

From Mary Wimbury

Delighted my husband @TalMichael will be Labour candidate for North Wales Police Commissioner. Very proud of the positive campaign he ran.

Tal Michael is the son of Alun Michael, the former Home Office minister who has been chosen as Labour's candidate as commissioner for South Wales police.

9.29am: I haven't seen a text of Ed Miliband's speech yet, and BBC News and Sky are pre-occupied with other matters, but some Labour police commissioner news has been coming out on Twitter.

John Prescott has confirmed that he will be Labour's police commissioner candidate in Humberside.

Good morning. I am really honoured to have been chosen by Labour members to be their Police and Crime Commissioner candidate....

— John Prescott (@johnprescott) June 18, 2012

In Wales Labour has announced the names of its candidates for the four police commissioner vacancies in Wales.

Hamish Sandison, Christine Gwyther, Tal Michael and Alun Michael Welsh Labour's Police and Crime Commissioner candidates enter press event

— Welsh Labour (@welshlabour) June 18, 2012

And JChamberlain, a political blogger from Birmingham, is tweeting what appears to be news from the Labour event.

West Mids Labour candidate for Police Commissioner is Wolverhampton Cllr Bob Jones

Ed Miliband says govt should not spend over £100m on police commissioner elections and use cash to pay for more coppers instead

But Miliband says Labour will use police commissioner elections to 'defend democracy' and calls for high turnout.

Police battling against the odds and against govt cuts, with over 2000 coppers to lose jobs in West Mids, says Miliband

But Ed Miliband makes no mention of any commitment by next Lab govt to restore police cuts

9.05am: Yesterday Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, said the government was going ahead with a £1bn contract to refurbish the Rolls-Royce plant in Derby to build reactors for the next generation of nuclear submarines. This will enable the government to replace Trident submarine-based nuclear deterrent. The Ministry of Defence is making a written ministerial statement about the announcement today.

The Lib Dems think a like-for-like replacement of Trident would be too expensive and the final decision about whether to go ahead with one has been postponed until after the 2015 general election. But, in an interview on the Today programme, Nick Harvey (pictured), the Lib Dem defence minister, said that the government was right to award the £1bn submarine contract now. I've taken the quote from PolitcsHome.

Yes, [this decision] did have to be taken now, and yes it is the right one. You've described this as simply being an order for new nuclear reactors, but half the money is renewing the infrastructure of the Rolls Royce facility at Derby, which simply has to be done – it's in need of a major renovation. And whatever submarines the UK is going to have in the future will need this facility to be modernised and brought up to 21st century standards.

This is a facility to build nuclear engines, and whatever submarines we're going to have, and whatever we're going to do with them we will need to have modern reactors, and this is where they're going to be built.

Harvey also said if the government in 2016 decided not to go ahead with a Trident like-for-like replacement, the £1bn would not be wasted.

The money that has been committed today is a spend over an 11 year period, so if we decide in 2016 not to go ahead with some of these engines the government of the day would have to negotiate its way out of that, and give them some alternative work on the next submarine programme instead.

8.50am: We thought we might be watching "Drachmageddon" this week. But, thanks to the voters in Greece, that particularly show has been postponed and instead those of us tuned in to the eurozone will be viewing another instalment of "Muddling through", the series that has been running for the last two years. As my colleague Martin Kettle argued in a good column recently, there's a lot to be said for muddling through - a much-underrated political strategy.

Those familiar with the eurozone's muddling through scenario will know that it often involves a speech from David Cameron saying This Cannot Go On and today Cameron will be deliving it in Mexico, where he is attending the G20 summit. My colleague Patrick Wintour has written a preview of the speech. Here's an extract from what Cameron will be saying.

The reality is that there are a set of things that eurozone countries need to do. And it's up to eurozone countries whether they are prepared to make the sacrifices these entail. The challenge is one of political will as much as economics. Of course these things are difficult to do, but just because these things are difficult does not mean we should not say them.

If the eurozone is to stay together then it has to make at least some of these difficult decisions. The alternatives to action that creates a more coherent eurozone are either a perpetual stagnation from a eurozone crisis that is never resolved or a break-up caused by a failure to address underlying economic fundamentals that would have financial consequences that would badly damage the world economy, including Britain.

There is more on the eurozone crisis on our eurozone live blog.

With Cameron at the G20, and the Greek election results dominating the headline, Westminster is not exactly where all the action is today. But I'm sure we'll manage. Here's the agenda.

8am: Vince Cable, the business secretary, gave a speech on Building Britain out of the Slump.

9am: Ed Milband gives a speech announcing Labour candidates for police and crime commissioners. He will also hold a Q&A.

Lunchtime: David Cameron arrives in Los Cabos, Mexico, for the G20 summit. As Patrick Wintour reports, he will give a speech saying that he eurozone risks facing perpetual economic stagnation from an unresolved crisis or a breakup caused by a failure to address its underlying economic failures.

2.30pm: Michael Gove, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and another at about 4pm.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm on @AndrewSparrow.

And if you're a hardcore fan, you can follow @gdnpoliticslive. It's an automated feed that tweets the start of every new post that I put on the blog.

• Ed Miliband

Andrew Sparrow

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Britain unveils stimulus to parry eurozone threat

Britain has stepped up its action against the eurozone crisis by agreeing to offer billions of pounds in cheap loans to British banks, in co-ordinated action that took markets by surprise.

The government and Bank of England (BoE) announced the surprise plan late Thursday in London in a bid to force commercial banks -- which are reluctant to lend amid the threat of a Greek exit from the eurozone -- to lend to businesses struggling amid Britain's recession.