Native Dutch people’s worries about foreigners are ‘understandable’, deputy prime minister Maxime Verhagen is set to say in a speech to Christian Democratic party members on Tuesday night, the NRC reports.

There is unease in Dutch society about wider issues than simply the economy and the CDA should listen more to concerns about the way foreigners are changing the Netherlands, the paper quotes Verhagen as saying in a leaked copy of the speech.
People are concerned about churches being replaced by mosques, about the fact immigrants don’t integrate and the risk that they will take Dutch jobs, the paper quotes the speech as saying.
Populism
Verhagen said he wants to distance himself from populism but that he is not blind to what drives it. ‘We have to make sure we do not dismiss these concerns as being offensive or unmentionable,’ he will say. ‘Such unease should also be the unease of a people’s party like the CDA.’
Solutions offered by some parties are populist and simplistic, Verhagen says, in a veiled reference to the anti-Islam PVV. ‘The fact that the multi-cultural society has failed is not a reason to crawl back behind the dykes and to reject everything which is strange and unfamiliar.’
The NRC points out that the CDA has lost ground in four elections in a row and is looking for a new direction to recover the support of its traditional voters.
[Editor’s note: this article has been updated following the publication of the full speech on the NRC website]