In today’s Dutch papers we have a hard-hitting pension debate, a Dutch Euro MP ejected from Nicaragua, the government playing Big Brother with our fingerprints and a shrine to Elvis in Breda.

Government’s pension plan survives debate
Advocates and opponents have been flexing their muscles for weeks but yesterday the day of reckoning came at last: the big debate on the government's plans to raise the pension age from 65 to 67. The front-page photo in De Telegraaf hints that things might not have gone too well for the government. It pictures Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and Finance Minister Wouter Bos looking all stony-faced and imperious. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth as the headline "In the pocket!" reveals. For despite fierce protests from the opposition and the unions, the government's plan sailed through yesterday’s vote.

As de Volkskrant reports, the opposition let rip with a whole host of pithy one-liners in an attempt to put a dent in the “biggest and most controversial reform since this government took office”. “The electorate has been duped!” “You’re pulling the wool over the public’s eyes!” thundered the right-wing Freedom Party and the left-wing Socialists. The conservative VVD savaged the plan as a “monstrosity”, while GreenLeft dismissed it as “a mishmash born of political bungling”.

PM counting his chickens too soon?
But for all this sound and fury, the paper goes on to note that “the coalition was not in trouble for a single second”. The opposition’s main problem was that they were divided: half of the parties were fighting tooth and nail to maintain the status quo, while the other half were touting alternative approaches for making the move from 65 to 67. Reason enough for the Prime Minister to trumpet at the end of the debate that “there has been a fundamental shift in the Netherlands”. Raising the pension age was once taboo but “people now see that this measure is necessary”.

However, de Volkskrant’s editorial warns Mr Balkenende that he shouldn’t count his chickens just yet. It observes that the government was at a loss to answer the opposition’s questions on how much money the plan will generate, as well as crucial issues such as the age groups most affected and what to do about people with physically demanding jobs. The paper points out the danger of postponing such difficult decisions indefinitely, concluding that “it will be a story that’s difficult to explain to the electorate.”

Dutch Euro MP furious at Nicaragua expulsion
Dutch Euro MP Hans van Baalen of the conservative VVD is furious at having been expelled from Nicaragua and he’s shouting it from the rooftops. “This treatment of a democratically elected people’s representative is a disgrace,” he fumes in De Telegraaf. “This kind of behaviour belongs in an East German museum.” Mr Van Baalen was in Nicaragua in his capacity as chairman of the Liberal International federation to offer a show of support to the country’s opposition. But it seems the authorities were not amused by the Euro MP’s criticism of President Daniel Ortega and his influence on the country’s Supreme Court.

It’s hard to tell what has angered Mr Van Baalen more: the expulsion itself or the fact that news of it only reached him when he was about to leave in any case. “These people can’t even do a decent job of throwing someone out of the country,” he fulminates. “I demand to be chucked out of a country properly and not to receive a cowardly last-minute notification.”

De Telegraaf harrumphs right along with him. In its editorial it says “silencing a politician is proof that Ortega’s Sandinista clan is unfit to govern” and calls for “fierce protests from Europe” and for “naïve aid organisations that still support Nicaragua to think again”.

Is Dutch government playing Big Brother with fingerprint repository?
Free-sheet newspaper De Pers leads with the news that three civil rights organisations plan to take the Dutch government to court over its plans to set up a central repository for fingerprints. The fingerprints are collected as biometric data for the new generation of passports and ID cards, a decision imposed by Europe. But it turns out that the Netherlands is unique in deciding to centralise the storage of this data.

“What the government is going to do is a step too far” argues lawyer Bart Schermer who specialises in privacy law. “These are physical characteristics which citizens give to the government” he insists, speculating that a citizen who applied for a new passport but refused to supply their fingerprints “could well have a leg to stand on in legal terms.” He continues “creating a central storage unit also creates a security risk. If it’s hacked and criminals gain access to these fingerprints, they could make 100,000 false passports.”

The Interior Ministry insists that the central facility is necessary for “organisational reasons” and can be defended as vital to the interests of society. But as legal expert Arnoud Engelfriet points out “Why then is it only the Netherlands that sees the need for a central fingerprint repository?”

Breda all shook up about Graceland mansion
Today’s AD reports “good new for Elvis fans” as the town of Breda looks set to get its very own Graceland-style mansion. It’s not such good news for local residents, however, for whom the “pompous villa is an eyesore”. They are even worried it might be turned into a brothel due to the presence of such decadent features as a swimming pool, a Jacuzzi and a relaxation room.

In one of those peculiar twists of the Dutch legal system, even though the angry residents won their case this week, the court also ruled that the building could continue. The Graceland builder’s lawyer presents the other side of the argument: “It’s all very well talking about not interfering with the rustic character of the neighbourhood but that disappeared long ago. We’re talking about a street on the edge of town just along from an industrial estate. Someone has even built an aircraft hangar.”

The notion of Elvis fans flocking to Breda is not as random as it might seem. AD reveals that it’s the birthplace of Elvis’s Svengali-like manager Colonel Tom Parker, who came into the world as plain old Dries van Kuijk.