Code of conduct for Rotterdam

For more than a year now, the city of Rotterdam, stronghold of the followers of the late Pim Fortuyn (click here if you don't know who he was), under the guidance of christian councillor Leonard Geluk, have been conducting debates between migrants and 'original' Dutch residents. At the final session, a solemn consensus was reached about the norms and values that residents of Rotterdam were supposed to uphold.

These norms and values were not to the liking of the LPF (List Pim Fortuyn, the political party of the Fortuyn followers who are a powerful party within the ruling coalition in Rotterdam). As a result, the councillors made their own list of norms and values: the Rotterdam Code. This document is supposed to be discussed (again...) and should serve as a codification of the norms and values the residents of Rotterdam hold each other accountable to. It is inteded as a means for integration and citizenship.

One of the rules explicitly states that Dutch is the common language. In the justification for this norm, the coalition states that a common language is necessary in everyday life and interactions on the streets. In other words: people should talk Dutch in Rotterdam. It took some time, but then our minister of immigration and integration, the ominous Rita Verdonk, recommended that this code should be followed everywhere in Holland. And then it took off: commentators predicted the organizing of a 'language police' to check whether people indeed speak Dutch on the streets. Others wondered whether this meant we could finally accost German tourists and insist that they speak Dutch or else piss off to their own country (...).

Of course, the whole brouhaha about the language thing is exaggerated. That is (probably?) not what the authors of the code intended. However, we should be clear on one thing as well: the whole idea of an informal code of conduct arrived at through the rather hysterical worries about integration of certain migrant minorities is exaggerated as well. It betrays a wish for complete cultural integration: migrants should become just like 'us' Dutch (for a large part descendants of previous generations of migrants, like the Hugenots, the 'Hannekemaaiers', the French, the Germans, Flemish, Romans, Goths, Vikings and God knows what...). And while some of the recommendations of this code are interesting, perhaps commendable and for the most part politically liberal, they are the clear product of the panic a petit bourgeois who wakes up one day to find out that his neigbors are not 'like him'. The fact that a minister thinks she needs to redommend these as well, shows that she does not really know what her role as member of the government really is.

In the mean time I would urge everybody to be very careful when speaking English in Rotterdam. You might be told off by the LPFers who rule that unholy place!