It was an interesting weekend the one spent between 19 and 22 September in Leeuwarden, capital city of Friesland - Fryslân in Frisian - on the occasion of the bureau meeting of EFAY (European Free Alliance Youth).
The weekend was an important opportunity to get to know the Fryske Nasjonale Partij (Frisian Nationalist Party), which since 1962 has represented the more than 400,000 Frisian speakers in its namesake province in the Netherlands.
The territory as a whole has approximately 642,000 inhabitants and 40% of its surface area is made up of water; it is precisely a sea and a lake that bathe the border of Friesland in the north and west - the North Sea and Lake Jsselmeer, respectively - while in the south and east, the provinces of Overijssel, Flevoland and Groningen and Drenthe mark the border.
Frisian, however, is diffused also outside the province itself, in a region stretching from the northern end of North Holland to southern Denmark, passing through the province of Groningen and the German regions of Saterland and North Frisia.
It is a language that is in its own way peculiar since, in addition to some
commonalities with Anglo-Saxon, it includes a group of dialects belonging to West Germanic. It is this variety of dialects that distinguishes its speech into three variants: West Frisian (characteristic of Friesland and the Dutch islands), North Frisian (spoken on the Sylt islands and the west coast of Schleswig), and East Frisian, which has almost completely disappeared.
Courtesy of the kind hospitality of Tjitte Hemstra and Paulina Slats, both
members of the Fryske Nasjonale Partij, we were able to visit the gracious historical streets and manicured canals of Ljouwert, a bucolic town that, although modest - it counts 100,000 inhabitants - boasts an international and dynamic atmosphere, guaranteed by the presence of the many local and international students who live here.
A party with stable settlement
Tjitte Hemstra, 27-year old MP elected by the FNP, accompanied us through the halls of the Steatefraksje, the Frisian Parliament, one of the twelve assemblies related to the twelve provinces that compose the territory of the Netherlands.
The MPs, elected every four years, have three principal functions:
.to represent the Frisian citizens;
.to define the political programme of the region (province);
.supervising the work of the Executive Committee: the body responsible for water management, which coordinates the twenty-one river districts over which the Netherlands is structured.
In addition, they have the important task of electing the members of the Staten-Generaal of Binnenhof - the bicameral parliament of the Netherlands - consisting of the Erste Kamer or Seenat, elected precisely by the representatives of the provincial assemblies; and the Tweede Kamer, elected instead by universal suffrage.
Although the FNP is not represented in the Staten-Generall, it holds the provincial government together with a coalition formed by the Christian Democratic Appeal, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy and the Labour Party.
In this sense, there are four elected parliamentarians from the FNP out of the Steatefraksje's total of 43, and a good 49 councillors and mayors elected in the various municipalities that constitute the Friesland region.
During the last fifteen years, the Frisian Nationalist Party has always obtained a representation of four elected members in the provincial assembly, standing at a percentage between eight and ten per cent of the total votes; a percentage that has ensured the party's continued presence within the governing coalition since 2007. The main topics of interest to the FNP concern:
housing, with the imminent construction of 15,000 new dwellings in the region of Friesland, in order to deal with the diriment problem of overcrowding that characterises this territory and the Netherlands in general (consider that in an area slightly larger than Tuscany 17 million
people reside);
identity, with the allocation of annual funds for the enhancement of the Frisian language, which already enjoys level certification for teachers but still enjoys horizons of growth and protection;
the environment: climate change increases the risk of flooding in the North Sea regions due to rising sea levels, increased river runoff and heavier rainfall.
Water governance is a question of identity
In Friesland, and in the Netherlands in general, it is not only the environment that is at risk, but the entire economic, social and agri-food conglomerate. This is why here, people have learnt to diligently manage the topic of water: from canals, to dam systems, to circular and re-use
strategies.
In order to govern it safely, a constant collaboration has developed between public, private, universities, research institutes and the population.
This system is coordinated by the Rijkswaterstaat: an organ of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, responsible for monitoring water levels in rivers, lakes and the sea, as well as for the design, construction and management of the Delta Works (the Dutch
flood defence system).
The goal here is to be climate neutral by 2050 (as in F-VG, in fact, by Italy - promises Fedriga - 5 years earlier), and to do this the Delta Programme bases water resource management on 3 pillars: flood risk management, freshwater supply and above all landscape redesign to cope with extreme climatic events; starting with the re-naturalisation of rivers along their natural course before human modifications.
All this in close collaboration with universities and research institutes, which have always been leaders in innovation and excellence.
An efficient model from which to take an example, starting from the protection of identity to the economic-environmental theme, which - as the Frisians teach us - can no longer be dissociated from one another; today's challenges place the agri-food, economic, energy and social systems increasingly in close contact, and as such they must be governed.
While in Friuli there are still those who fight for the installation of 30- metre-high pylons on the Tagliamento, - aka the least anthropised river in Europe - an economic-environmental vision of the future that was perhaps fine 30 years ago, and at the expense of it, is a richness that perhaps we do not even realise of having; certainly something to be reflected upon.