Sandy explosions and heated sands, a popularity slide and a veto lift. Just four of the issues covered by today’s Dutch newspapers.

Blasted beach
On page 11 of today’s free commuter daily Metro there’s a tiny item entitled “Practising with an explosion”. I guess it would be better headed as “Practising for an explosion” since it’s about an exercise held in Amsterdam on Saturday at one of the capital’s two teaching hospitals to prepare staff for the possibility of a major explosion.

Meanwhile ( and I thought this was going to be the story in Metro) there was a major explosion at the weekend – but with no resulting injuries as far as we know. As many papers report – but not Metro - today and as RNW did at the weekend there was, as NRC next’s headline puts it, a “Blast in Zeeland caused by very high explosives” late last Friday evening.

This blast took place on a beach nearby the port of Vlissingen (known to many non-Dutch speakers as Flushing) down in this sparsely populated coastal province. The only thing destroyed was an old concrete caisson, the kind of hollow box-like structure used to build coastal defences or – when sunk - as the foundation for a bridge, or similar.

The official line is still that the actual cause of the blast is not yet known, but worryingly perhaps - as de Telegraaf reports - “the police believe it was probably caused deliberately”. So, it wasn’t some unexploded World War II bomb or mine, or – as some initially thought – part of that US satellite falling back to earth. AD inform us that the mayor of Vlissingen says it could have been phosphorous - there’s a phosphor plant just across the water from where the blast took place, leaving a crater of some three metres – but that doesn’t seem likely either.

No, given that the police have put no fewer than 20 detectives on the case and that locals saw two cars driving away from the scene at high speed just after the explosion, it does indeed look as if this incident really would deserve the headline “practising with an explosion”. Next logical question is: if the practise ‘target’ was a concrete caisson on a beach, what’s the non-practise target likely to be?

Beach fun – last chance for a natural tan?
Staying down at the coast, we’ve just been blessed with a couple of days of sunny weather - a good reason for the not-quite-so-high-brow newssheets to lead with colourful photos on their front pages of people enjoying the clement weather. We have, after all, had one of the wettest (i.e. rainiest) summers on record.

One owner of a seaside cafe replies to De Telegraaf’s reporter thus: “Can we keep this chat short? It’s so busy right now”. After a particularly poor season for those who depend on the weather for their summertime income, it’s unlikely the couple of days of 20-degree-plus temperatures and sunny skies will make that much difference, but every little helps, does it not?

Talking of little – as in little creatures - De Telegraaf also tell us about a “Mass migration of mosquitoes into homes”. The paper quotes “mosquito expert” Piet Verdonschoot of Wageningen University, who says “Due to the wet summer there are 10 to 30 percent more mosquitoes than normal [...] and they’re going inside to survive the winter” which – he tells us – they may do by lurking “behind a picture frame or in a cupboard.” He reassures us that we won’t get bitten, because they won’t be reproducing during the winter months – but with the current warm spell I think he might be wrong about that.

Tanned politician sees popularity drop
After Geert Wilders’ controversial comments last week in parliament – including the ‘get real, man’ exchange with Prime Minister Mark Rutte – today’s papers reflect on how all this has cost the dyed-blond, (fake?)-tanned and highly popular politician and his Freedom Party two parliamentary seats, according to a new opinion poll.

AD reports that Mr Wilders is not alone, however, for the leader of the main opposition Labour Party, Job Cohen – the man Mr Wilders called a ‘company poodle’ – also loses one seat, as well as finding that the fellow opposition D66 Democrats have caught up and would now share the title of 4th largest party with Labour if an election were held. Worse still for Mr Cohen, many of his own Labour voters – more than one in three in fact - are not impressed by his performance as leader. Prime Minister Rutte – the ‘get real’ target – hasn’t been dented by the name-calling it seems.

Good news for Mr Wilders though as freesheet Metro reports “PVV (Freedom Party) will get seats back in no time”. That’s the opinion of political scientist Meindert Fennema who says “Voters go more for the content of the message than the form [...] this dip is a reaction to the hype, but as soon as the focus moves back to the substance, Wilders will win his voters back.”

You have to wonder if the same will apply to Mr Cohen who, after all, never said anyone else should ‘get real’ or was a ‘company poodle’ and whose message no doubt has some substance too.

Drop the veto
You may or may not know, but the Netherlands recently used its European Union veto to block Bulgaria and Romania becoming part of the no-border-controls Schengen group of countries because of problems there “with their legal systems and fighting corruption”.

“Hooray” has been the reaction of many a Euro-sceptic here (and probably elsewhere also) but an editorial in today’s Trouw points out that while it’s fine to criticize these new EU member states, the veto is not. In the first place, it won’t stop Romanians and Bulgarians from travelling freely within the union (we all can, you know, even if we do have to show a passport) and – subject to certain conditions in the case of these two countries – seeking and accepting work.

More importantly, the commentator writes in Trouw, the Dutch have vetoed Schengen membership on “grounds that do not apply to Schengen membership”, in fact the two countries have met all the Schengen conditions.

This means that the Netherlands looks “like it is engaged in a revenge campaign for previous problems”. The author continues: “It is absolutely true that Romania and Bulgaria have not done as well as desired since joining the EU [...] but if the Netherlands wants to encourage other EU countries to behave well, it needs to be a bit more flexible when countries do stick to an agreement” (the Schengen one, in this instance). Couldn’t have put it better myself, and I’m not even Bulgarian.