Transatlantic opportunities
Gelegenheid: viering van 400 jaar Nederland-AmerikaLadies and Gentleman, I listened very carefully to Russell Shorto’s description of Henry Hudson. Pig-headed. Stubborn. Didn’t do what he was told to do. Did something great without even wanting to do so, but purely by accident. We should have offered him a job in Dutch politics! He qualifies perfectly for what we are trying to do, and for what we are not achieving or achieving by accident.
It’s great to be here and to see all of you here, because I think we have something on offer that should not be disqualified. I think that we have something that you should jump at. You should be our partners in something that could be truly great. 2009 will be a momentous year, for several reasons. A new administration in the US, a new relationship between the EU and the US, and between the Netherlands and the US. New opportunities. The strong feeling that we need to reinvigorate this Transatlantic relationship, and not just talk about military relations, not just talk about strategic relations, but about human relations, about the values we share, values that have been under pressure and under debate in the last couple of years. Values that are still strong. If I look at Dutch society, a lot of young people - in all their interests - show a great knowledge of American culture and at the same time they have developed, like so many of their friends, a dislike for everything to do with the United States, simply for short-term political reasons. And I think this is something we need to look at, something we need to overcome. And now we have this wonderful, momentous opportunity.
Russell Shorto is absolutely right. The great thing is that a huge interest exists in the United States in what is going to happen next year. And it would be a mistake to underestimate the willingness of our American partners to invest in this commemoration. Another mistake would be to just look back, to just look at our history, our common history, our common values in the past, and not take this forward, into the future. We really want this to be something, the start of a relationship that will endure, after 2009, on the basis of our common values. A third mistake we could make would be to concentrate on only one subject, only one level. This is not just about politicians talking to other politicians, about people from Amsterdam visiting people from New York. This is about artists, about culture, this is about people in business, this is about writers, this is about people who form public opinion. They should be in touch. They should discover their common heritage, but also the points that they share and the points they differ on.
If I can take just take one example, one that has everything to do with diversity and integration. Very few cities, if you look at it carefully, have a truly cosmopolitan soul. Amsterdam is one of them and New York is another. And in those cities, dialogue between different cultures and the relationships between different groups is a natural thing. That doesn’t mean that this is always the case in the surrounding areas, or in our nations at large. I think Amsterdam has a lot to teach the Netherlands and New York has a lot to teach the United States.
I was fortunate enough, three weeks ago, to have a long conversation with Senator John Edwards in London, and we discovered that the people he represents in the US and the people I represent in the Netherlands have the same fears and anxieties. They have this insecurity about their identity, insecurity about their future. For the first time since the Second World War people actually think that they will be worse off in the future than they are today. That their children will probably be worse off than they were as children. This is not just a European phenomenon. I was struck by the fact that John Edwards stressed that many people – especially blue-collar people in the US – have the same fears, the same feelings, the same anxieties. Also about diversity. And I think we have a lot to learn from each other’s experience in this area.
The Dutch tend to see, roughly speaking, the extreme importance of freedom of speech in the US, which is absolute. At the same time, they tend to underestimate the social conventions that make it possible to have freedom of speech. Because in the Netherlands freedom of speech these days is associated with the right to insult anyone we like, with the right to say anything we like, even if it is very insulting. Whereas in the US freedom of speech is also associated with, not a legally binding but a socially binding effort to respect that person, to gain respect for the pains that people have gone through to be socially accepted. To be socially fully functional. And I think that these are elements that can help us understand each other. But I fully understand that if I go on about this, it will not interest many of you who are interested simply in, ‘What’s in it for me?’
So I want to insist on just these points. If I look at the development of the economy, especially in the North East of the US, if I look at the development of our economy, financial services, creativity, I see people bringing together different aspects of the economy, of their creativity, of their thinking. And creating new products, creating new ideas. I see a huge openness, companies being far more open than they were in the past. That is something we are learning in New York and in the Netherlands. This is something we can teach each other to cultivate, because it’s an example for the rest of the world. We have such great opportunities. The emerging economies in Asia are not looking to better us, they are not looking to wipe us off the map. They want to cooperate with us. And this very strong bond across the Atlantic could be an example for this cooperation.
We have prepared a very brief menu of appetisers, first courses, and – do we have any desserts? – Oh yes. We also have an interesting project list, and I would urge you to look at those projects, to look at the appetisers, and to see if there is anything that catches your interest. I think it could help create a stronger basis for Dutch-American cooperation in the future. If we could just show our citizens how much we have in common, and also try to coax them into understanding the differences, which are so beautiful and so helpful in understanding who we actually are.
In the Netherlands, in the last couple of years, we have had this huge debate about our identity, where we are going etc., etc. And if we take the time to look back at this great city’s history, we can see what was done by often very humble people, in creating this new world across the Atlantic. People took huge risks by stepping on rocky boats to go all the way to what is now the United States. But still they took their values; they took their will to be free, the spirit to develop their own lives in the way they wished; they took all this to the United States, and this is part of the American DNA, even though we sometimes don’t realise it these days.
I insisted on Amsterdam for a very specific reason and I say this to all of you who, like myself, are not from Amsterdam. Does anybody know Tom Petty? I am sure many of you do, I hope you do, at least. One of the first concerts I saw as a boy here in the Netherlands was a Tom Petty concert. He came to the Netherlands – he seldom travelled outside the US, but he came to the Netherlands. And I bought a DVD last year with this concert, and the concert was at Pinkpop, in my own province, Limburg, about 200 kilometres from here. And this DVD was made in the US, and Tom Petty was talking, saying that he once went to Europe to do a concert in Amsterdam. So my son, who is 19 years old, was outraged. He said, ‘Amsterdam! It wasn’t in Amsterdam, it was in Limburg!’ But for many Americans, Amsterdam is the Netherlands. So if we concentrate on Amsterdam in this celebration, if we put a lot of emphasis on the historic ties between Amsterdam and New York, then in the eyes of many of our American friends we are talking about the Netherlands at large.
I can guarantee that the Dutch government will put a lot of effort and a lot of money into this celebration. We know that the minimum we need to make it a success will be about 6.2 million euros. This is what we are trying to achieve. I am not in a position today to guarantee that sum, but I think we can be successful if all departments in our government chip in. The ministry of Economic Affairs has been very helpful and my ministry is prepared to take a large part of the burden, but we will not do so if others develop a free ride sentiment. So if I can tell you that 6.2 million euros – by now that is almost 10 million dollars if I am not mistaken! – if we put this on the table, I hope that you will find it in your hearts, and in your interests, to look at the projects, to see what your company might find interesting, and to join us in this wonderful endeavour. Because I do believe that we can do something wonderful in 2009 that is to your benefit, to our benefit. And – something that is extremely important – to the benefit of both our societies.
Thank you