‘Scusi signora, could I show my friend this palazzo?’
I was in Naples with an Italian friend and he was going to show me a palace. Well, that’s what I thought then with my poor knowledge of the Italian language. And this particular building was a palace. Theatrical stairways, wall paintings, everything breathed grandeur and glory. A few months later I really was sad to discover the Italian word palazzo is translated simply with the ordinary building. Way too normal for your Italian-loving Europeanologist.
Behaving normally was the main slogan of the winning party in the recent Dutch elections, with weird interpunction: Doe. Normaal. or: Behave. Normally. Whatever this interpunction statement means, it helped the liberals of the VVD to win or at least to lose much less than their coalition ally the Labour party.
The Dutch elections of 2017 being the second of a series of elections in the EU, international media were curious as to how far right populism would get. Fortunately, in Austria the green candidat Van der Bellen already won the elections last year, but would the anti-migration, anti-EU populists get further? How would the Dutch do?
In the forecast the Dutch far right PVV scored very high. In the end, it became the second party with 20 Members of Parliament (MP); far behind the liberals (VVD) with 33 MPs and closely followed by the christian democrats and the liberal democrats, both with 19 MPs. The most likely coalitions would be without the PVV.
The biggest win was for Groenlinks (GreenLeft) with +12 MPs.
The biggest loss was for Labour (PvdA) with -29 MPs.
Paola Peduzzi from the Italian newspaper Il Foglio asked my opinion about the possible loss of Labour, just before the elections. (click on the image to enlarge, I’m in the first article)
