Dutch PM vows Ukraine support despite political chaos
THE HAGUE: Caretaker Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof vowed Wednesday to keep up support for Ukraine and stick to defence commitments, despite the political crisis roiling the Netherlands after the government collapsed.
Schoof said he would stay on as PM until elections, after far-right leader Geert Wilders pulled his Freedom Party (PVV) out of the fragile ruling coalition.
In the Netherlands, a caretaker government may not take new initiatives but can continue with priority policies with the support of parliament.
Schoof set these out in a fiery parliamentary debate, with passions running high after the shock decision of Wilders to collapse the government.
'Life in the Netherlands and abroad goes on and decisions have to be taken that cannot be delayed,' said Schoof.
'I think these concern domestic and international security, including support for Ukraine and everything we need to do for defence,' he added.
He said other priorities included international trade given global tariff battles, and introducing a budget in September.
The sudden collapse of the government Tuesday came just weeks before the Netherlands welcomes world leaders including US President Donald Trump for a NATO summit.
It plunged the European Union's fifth top economy and major exporter into chaos, only 11 months after a cabinet was formed.
According to Dutch law, authorities require three months to prepare new elections, with most analysts expecting a vote in October or November.
Polls show the PVV neck-and-neck with the Green/Left party of former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans, with the liberal VVD close behind.
Timmermans called for elections as soon as possible and attacked Wilders as a 'stain on this country.'
'I really hope that you never, ever, have any influence in running this country ever again,' said Timmermans.
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New Straits Times
3 hours ago
- New Straits Times
Dutch election set for Oct 29 after government falls
THE HAGUE: The Netherlands will hold snap elections on October 29, authorities announced Friday, after far-right leader Geert Wilders pulled out of the ruling coalition, bringing down the government and sparking political chaos. "We have officially set the election date: the... elections will take place on Wednesday 29 October 2025," Interior Minister Judith Uitermark wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "In the coming period, I will work with the municipalities and other stakeholders to prepare so that this important day in our democracy goes smoothly," added the minister. The vote in the European Union's fifth-largest economy and major global exporter will be closely watched in Europe, where far-right parties have made significant electoral gains. Polls suggest Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) is running neck-and-neck with the Left/Green group of former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans. The liberal VVD party stands just behind in the polls, suggesting the election will be closely fought. The election was prompted by the dramatic withdrawal of Wilders and the PVV from a shaky ruling coalition in a row over immigration policy. Wilders grumbled that the Netherlands was not fast enough to implement the "strictest-ever" immigration policy agreed by the four-way coalition – and pulled out. He had stunned the political establishment in the Netherlands by winning November 2023 elections by a significant margin – clinching 37 seats out of the 150 in parliament. The fractured nature of Dutch politics means no one party is ever strong enough to win 76 seats and govern with an absolute majority. Wilders persuaded the VVD, the BBB farmers party, and the anti-corruption NSC party to govern with him – but the price was to give up his ambition to become prime minister. The PVV has apparently lost some support since that election, with recent surveys suggesting they would win around 28 to 30 seats. But the issue after the coming election will be: who will enter into a coalition with Wilders and the PVV? There was widespread fury with the far-right leader for bringing down the government over what many saw as an artificial crisis. Far-right parties have been on the rise across Europe. In May, the far-right Chega ("Enough") party took second place in Portugal's elections. In Germany, the anti-immigration far-right AfD doubled its score in legislative elections in February, reaching 20.8 percent.
The Star
6 hours ago
- The Star
Why recycling old clothes isn't the easy fix we hoped it would be
At the height of the holiday season on Amsterdam's Kalverstraat last December, thousands of shoppers who regularly descend on the popular shopping district came face to face with the grim reality behind humanity's sartorial excess. A local activist group had deposited an enormous pile of clothes on the sidewalk, in sight of stores such as Adidas, Zara and the popular Dutch casual fashion chain Cotton Club. Some seven feet-tall and 25-feet around (over two metres tall and seven-metres around), the garment dump drew puzzled looks from passersby, some of whom stopped to read handwritten signs poking out the top. "Every 10 minutes we throw away this much clothing in the Netherlands,' read one. The intent, the organisers said, wasn't just to draw attention to clothing waste, but to urge companies to reveal how much clothing they make-a first step toward addressing what's long been a disastrous side-effect of the phenomenon known as "fast-fashion.' But while a local newspaper ran an article on the protest, not much else came of it. It was however emblematic of a now-well understood problem across Europe, and its seemingly intractable nature. Tied to the arrival in the 1990s of fast fashion – which for the uninitiated is essentially the ability to churn out new clothing lines at cheap prices-the environmental destruction caused by discarded and disintegrating clothing cannot be understated. Attempts at reuse and recycling have only put a small dent in the worsening problem, hindered by a thorny set of technological obstacles to making old clothing new again. But not far from where that pile of discarded pants and tops befuddled Amsterdam shoppers, there is a company that says it may have hit upon a solution. It's one of a handful across the globe trying to crack the code to clothing waste. According to the European Commission, consumers in Europe discard around 5.8 million tons of textiles every year. Globally, that figure comes to 92 million tons. Clothing consumption almost doubled between 1975 and 2020, according to Textile Exchange, a nonprofit that organises textile and apparel manufacturers and brands around sustainability. It's projected to leap another 25% by 2030. Read more: Can the fashion industry turn to technology to solve its massive waste problem? The genesis of (and indeed collateral damage from) fast fashion has been well documented. Global clothing chains such as Zara and H&M pioneered the trend of re-supplying stores with new, low-priced clothing every four-to-six weeks instead of with the seasons, enabling more consumers to follow trends without committing too much cash. Add to that rising incomes in developed nations and low wages in exporting countries, and fast fashion became a winning business model. But those low prices and monthly trends mean the journey from fashion statement to landfill became much shorter-and that's where the environmental disaster began. Clothing, as with anything, is the sum of its parts. Plastics, dyes and chemicals are leaking out of growing mountains of refuse all over the world, poisoning lands, rivers and oceans. Some of the microplastics inside every human being may easily have originated in a discarded pair of cargo shorts. As for those clothing items that end up in incinerators, well, fast fashion does its part to accelerate global warming, too. And that's just the endgame. The starting point of what many people wear is cotton, and growing it requires tremendous amounts of water, depleting resources in a world where fresh water and arable land are becoming more scarce. Polyester is made from fossil fuels, the burning of which is the prime culprit in climate change-a fact that also applies to the untold number of factories, planes and trucks that make up the global clothing supply chain. Recycling and reuse sound like an appealing solution, but as Bloomberg revealed in a 2022 investigation, much of what's collected ends up overwhelming the usually underdeveloped destinations where it's sent for repurposing, resale or donation. Or the items are "downcycled' into things like stuffing for car seats and mattresses. Producing new clothes from old items hasn't been a workable solution, either, at least not at scale. The processing required reduces the length and strength of fibres, making it hard to turn them into yarn that would be practical for making new clothing. According to a 2024 study in Cleaner Engineering and Technology, the biggest hurdle to recycling clothing is the quality of the end product. Just 1% of old clothes are made into new clothes. But after a decade of attempts, a new wave of recycling tech is taking hold in Europe, with companies and entrepreneurs hoping to break through the barrier between a planet drowning in old clothes and one where everything is effectively a hand-me-down. Andreas Bartl, a senior scientist at Technical University Vienna who studies textile recycling methods and processes, said an inflection point has been reached. "The last two years, technologies have evolved and this is a big jump in quality,' he said. "The rate of about 1% will improve in the next years.' New sustainability regulations in the Netherlands require the fashion industry incorporate a minimum 16.5% recycled material into their wares by 2030. Similar Europe-wide rules have been proposed as well. Key to recent improvements in the industry's ability to comply may be two technologies being developed by companies in the US and Europe. In the latter, they include La Roche in France, Rester in Finland, Valvan in Belgium, Reju in Germany, the Swedish Waste Management Association (Sysav) and Wieland Textiles, a company just outside Amsterdam owned by Brightfiber Textiles BV. To recycle clothing waste in a way that doesn't do further damage to the environment, different colours must be separated. Otherwise, the raw materials and yarns produced from recycled clothing end up with an unappealing grey hue that, while suitable for mops and stuffing, aren't the foundation of a sustainable clothing line. But Brightfiber and Sysav have come up with something called an optical sorting machine. Since different colours and materials reflect light differently, the machine allows items to be differentiated simply by bouncing light off of them. The ability to separate fibres is also improving, thanks to chemical processes now deployed by Frankfurt-based Reju, a company started in 2023 by Patrik Frisk, a former chief executive of Under Armour and president of Timberland. The company has found a way to separate cotton and wool from polyester or elastane-the material which gives yoga pants, underwear waistbands and skinny jeans their stretch. La Roche, Rester and Valvan meanwhile have developed machines that tear clothing items into small pieces, cleaning them of buttons, zippers and labels. Taken together, these new technologies may enable recycling at a volume never before possible. But the open question is will it be enough for clothing companies to sacrifice the easier, more destructive path to fast-fashion? Brightfiber said it is the first European company to successfully bring together optical sorting, cutting-cleaning and raw material production to make high-quality substitutes for virgin cotton, wool or blends of organic and sustainable fibres and synthetics like polyester. Its factory is located just a few miles northwest of Kalverstraat, shoehorned into a logistics centre near Amsterdam's western port. The company said it began with €5mil (approximately RM24.2mil) invested, including a €1mil (RM4.8mil) grant from a Dutch government sustainability initiative. The first thing you see when entering Brightfiber's building is a small showroom of sweaters, shirts and pants-made from recycled clothes, of course. Rather than being obviously repurposed or rough to the touch, they appear and feel similar to the lightweight retail sweater worn by a reporter during a recent visit. Producing such soft, fine yarn is a recent advance from the more primitive cable-knits of earlier designs, said Ellen Mensink, Brightfiber's founder and CEO. To be clear, no one has figured out how to make usable materials that are entirely recycled old clothing. Brightfiber, like its rivals in the growing space, makes material from a combination of recycled fibers, new material and waste pieces. To note, waste cloth comes from the factory floor – as much as 40% of material fed into clothing production lines ends up discarded. The mixture is necessary to deliver the longer fibres needed for quality yarns, the company said. Mensink said Brightfiber's production is derived from between 40% and 70% post-consumer textiles. Also added in are organic and sustainable fibers like lyocell and alpaca-or polyester from recycled bottles. As for colour separation, when seen up close, it's clear that a green Brightfiber sweater is not uniform in colour, but composed of yarn of many similar shades of green. While making clothing often begins in a cotton field, recycling it begins in a donation bin. Brightfiber buys old clothes by the pound from both charities and companies that gather discarded items from collection points across the Netherlands. Currently around half of textile waste in the country comes from dropoff bins. In Germany, the rate is even higher, at 70% according to Bartl. But worldwide efforts to recycle textile waste sit at only 15%, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. When old clothes arrive at Brightfiber, its optical sorting machine uses near-infrared light to detect a garment's material and colour, and then separates the stream into 90 different combinations. There are ten colours and nine material combinations, including cotton-polyester, polyester-elastane and cotton-polyester-elastane. A second machine developed by Valvan chops these into pieces the size of an adult's palm, cleaning them of buttons, zippers and labels. The resulting swatches are then transformed into a fluff similar in look to virgin cotton, thanks to a third machine developed by Brightfiber and Turkey-based Balkan Textile Machinery Ltd. That fluff is in turn spun into yarn for fabrics and end-products that Brightfiber sells to other brands, including the Dutch chain King Louie. The whole line can run 5.5 million pounds a year, according to Mensink. She contends two lines would give the company the capacity to process all of metro Amsterdam's textile waste. Read more: Known fashion brands bought cotton grown by children in India, says report Even with these advances, chemical separation will likely remain central to repurposing the vast majority of textiles that aren't made of 100% natural fibres. The ubiquity of polyester in modern clothing makes separating it from other materials inescapable. "It's extracting the polyester and then depolymerising it-breaking it down back into its monomer, and then polymerising it again to make it back into polyester,' explains Reju's Frisk, who said his company has optimised this process. Reju's method adds a catalyst to one of three existing chemical recycling methods. "This makes it faster and more efficient,' Frisk said. Reju's end product becomes feedstock for its owner, France-based Technip Energies NV. The company said its technology is used in about 1,000 polyester factories around the world, representing a third of all polyester manufacturing. Brightfiber and Reju hope to benefit from European Union regulation. So-called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mechanisms are already in place in several countries, aimed at forcing textile producers to internalise the cost of waste. In February, the EU Council Presidency and Parliament representatives reached a provisional agreement to harmonise frameworks already existing in France, the Netherlands and elsewhere, with a goal of placing an EPR scheme across all 27 member states. The rules would require manufacturers pay into a fund that will be used to develop recycling infrastructure, with the fees "eco-modulated' so that more-sustainable products cost producers less. Bartl expressed concern though, saying whatever policy comes out of Brussels shouldn't impede existing efforts in Austria, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands. The EU should not "destroy a system that is quite efficient in sorting textiles', he said. Frisk and Bartl agreed that requiring minimum repurposed content for garments might be the best way to jumpstart clothing recycling. "Let's just put it at 5%-whatever, just so the industry knows that this is coming,' Frisk said. – Bloomberg
The Sun
7 hours ago
- The Sun
Zelenskiy's NATO invite weighed amid Trump tensions
BRUSSELS: Officials organising a NATO summit in The Hague this month are expected to keep it short, restrict discussion of Ukraine, and choreograph meetings so that Volodymyr Zelenskiy can somehow be in town without provoking Donald Trump. Though the Ukrainian president is widely expected to attend the summit in some form, NATO has yet to confirm whether he is actually invited. Diplomats say he may attend a pre-summit dinner but be kept away from the main summit meeting. Whether the brief summit statement will even identify Russia as a threat or express support for Ukraine is still up in the air. The careful steps are all being taken to avoid angering Washington, much less provoking any repeat of February's White House blow-up between Trump and Zelenskiy that almost torpedoed the international coalition supporting Kyiv. NATO's European members, who see Russia as an existential threat and NATO as the principal means of countering it, want to signal their continued strong support for Ukraine. But they are also desperate to avoid upsetting a volatile Trump, who stunned them at a summit seven years ago by threatening to quit the alliance altogether. If Zelenskiy does not attend in some form, it would be 'at least a PR disaster', acknowledged a senior NATO diplomat. Since Russia's invasion three years ago, Zelenskiy has regularly attended NATO summits as the guest of honour, where alliance members pledged billions in weapons and condemned Russia for an illegal war of conquest. Leaders repeatedly promised that Ukraine would one day join NATO. But since Washington's shift under Trump towards partly accepting Russia's justifications for the war and disparaging Zelenskiy, the 32-member alliance no longer speaks with a single voice about Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two. Trump has taken Ukraine's NATO membership off the table, unilaterally granting Moscow one of its main demands. After dressing down Zelenskiy in the Oval Office in February, Trump cut vital U.S. military and intelligence support for Ukraine for days. Since then, the two men publicly mended fences in a meeting in St Peter's Basilica for the funeral of Pope Francis. But mostly they have spoken remotely, with Zelenskiy twice phoning the White House on speakerphone while surrounded by four friendly Europeans -- Britain's Keir Starmer, France's Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Friedrich Merz and Poland's Donald Tusk. SPENDING BOOST Trump is expected to come away from The Hague with a big diplomatic victory as NATO members heed his longstanding complaints that they do not spend enough on defence and agree a much higher target. They are expected to boost their goal for traditional military spending to 3.5% of economic output from 2%. A further pledge to spend 1.5% on related expenses such as infrastructure and cyber defence would raise the total to 5% demanded by Trump. But the summit itself and its accompanying written statement are expected to be unusually short, minimising the chances of flare-ups or disagreements. A pledge to develop recommendations for a new Russia strategy has been kicked into the long grass. Meanwhile, Zelenskiy may have to be content with an invitation to a pre-summit dinner, hosted by Dutch King Willem-Alexander, diplomats say. Unlike at NATO's previous two annual summits, the leaders do not plan to hold a formal meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council, the official venue for talks between the alliance and Kyiv. The senior NATO diplomat said a working dinner with either foreign ministers or defence ministers could instead serve as an NUC. 'PROPERLY REPRESENTED' On Wednesday, NATO boss Mark Rutte said he had invited Ukraine to the summit, but sidestepped a question on whether the invitation included Zelenskiy himself. After meeting Rutte on Monday, Zelenskiy said on X that it was 'important that Ukraine is properly represented' at the summit. 'That would send the right signal to Russia,' he said. U.S. and Ukrainian officials did not reply to questions about the nature of any invitation to Ukraine. Some European countries are still willing to say in public that they hope to see Zelenskiy invited as the head of the Ukrainian delegation. Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur said he would like to see a 'delegation led by President Zelenskiy'. Asked about an invitation for Zelenskiy, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said 'I, for my part, strongly welcome the invitation' without giving further details. But diplomats have tried to play down the importance of the formal status of Zelenskiy's role: 'Many allies want to have Zelenskiy at the summit, but there is flexibility on the precise format that would allow his presence,' said a second senior NATO diplomat. A senior European diplomat said: 'We should not get stuck on 'NUC or no NUC'. If he comes to the leaders' dinner, that would be the minimum.'
