Shell’s boss defies Dutch opposition MPs and we’re told there’s no underclass in the Netherlands. A mayor has to eat humble pie after gays are hounded out of his patch and an online register is offline. It’s all in the Dutch dailies.

Shell is staying in Syria
Most of today’s papers report the meeting between Shell boss Dick Benschop and opposition MPs eager to convince him that his oil company should “pull out of Syria”, as de Volkskrant puts it, in protest at the regime’s continuing violence against protesters.

Mr Benschop’s message was unequivocal: Shell will “loyally” co-operate with a possible international oil embargo against the regime in Damascus, but will not leave Syria alone. “Imposing sanctions isn’t the job of companies,” he said. “We don’t want to take the place of politicians.”

One of the reasons he gave was fear of reprisals against Shell staff in Syria. “We can’t just run out on our people,” the paper quotes him as saying. Besides, even an EU embargo wouldn’t do any good: the competition - countries such as Russia and India, de Volkskrant suggests, – would just rush in to fill the gap.

Today’s AD devotes a whole page to the meeting and related issues. It points out that Shell exploits oil in collaboration with Syria’s state oil company and that unilaterally shutting off the drills wouldn’t be that easy.

It also mentions Mr Benschop’s political background – he was a deputy minister in the Labour government from 1998 to 2002. Labour was among the opposition parties calling for Shell action.

In an opinion piece in AD, the author suggests that the politicians have so far shown themselves incapable of imposing any concrete measures targeting the Syrian regime. He sees the Dutch MPs’ call for a Shell boycott as an example of political opportunism.

Read RNW's news coverage of this story

Poor escaping poverty
Trouw is one of the papers picking up on an official report which says that only seven percent of those who grew up in poverty remain poor in adult life. Deputy Social Affairs Minister Paul Krom was quick to make political capital from the figures. “We don’t have a widespread culture of poverty here,” he crows.

The report’s author is also upbeat, saying there appears to be no underclass in the Netherlands. He believes the report shows that “there’s no great dependence on benefits carrying on from generation to generation”.

However, Trouw points out that the statistics are based on a poverty line of around 1,000-euro income per month. The figures do not specify how much more the people ‘above the poverty line’ earned. The children of poorly qualified fathers, it says, tend to be poorly qualified themselves, and thus miss out on higher-paid jobs.

Below its coverage of the report, de Volkskrant runs a piece on a clothes shop in Rotterdam. A lot of what’s on show here is for children, says the paper. What makes this shop different is that the clothes are not on sale, they’re free.

However, only people with less than 175 euros a month to spend (200 euros for families) are allowed to come here - twice a year - and chose a new outfit. One in ten children grows up in poverty, de Volkskrant reminds us.

Mayor apologises to gay couple
Today’s papers give prominent coverage to the apology made by Utrecht Mayor Aleid Wolfsen to two men who were victimised because they lived as a gay couple in a suburb of the city. They eventually were forced to move house and are now suing the council for negligence, says nrc.next.

Despite reporting incidents, such as the word ‘homo’ being scratched on their car and bricks thrown through their windows, the authorities including the police failed or were slow to act. The result is that, after two years of problems, no one has been charged with any offences.

Nrc.next describes the culprits as youths of between16 to 18 from the immigrant community. In its coverage of the case, De Telegraaf doesn’t pull any punches, saying Mayor Wolfsen had to eat humble pie because he allowed the two gay men to be hounded out of the neighbourhood by Dutch-Moroccan youths.

De Telegraaf turns the piece into a call for Dutch mayors to be elected and not appointed by councillors as they are at present. “We citizens should be able to vote in our representatives for ourselves,” is its rallying cry.

Online register offline
An online register was launched yesterday to allow people to decide which internet advertisers can collate information about their surfing behaviour. The Don’t-follow-me register is designed to let people opt out of being followed by advertising cookies.

The only problem, says nrc.next, was that the site went offline almost as soon as it had been launched. The reason given was the “unexpected degree of interest” in the site. The paper sees no reason for further comment.