Parliaments often debate policy issues, but they rarely spend four hours discussing the state and quality of the country’s diplomatic apparatus.
This is what happened yesterday in the Dutch Second Chamber.
Consulates of key importance
Members of Parliament were unanimous that cuts in diplomacy have gone too far. Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans was asked to keep those missions open that are of key importance for the Netherlands’ economy. In particular Consulates-General in Europe and North America (Antwerp, Munich, Milan and Chicago).
What became clear in this debate, is that the internationalist instincts of a recently far too introverted country have prevailed.
'Cinderella service'
Remarkably, consuls and consular diplomacy have taken their historical revenche on an undeserved reputation. Once the ‘Cinderella service’, consular missions are once again valued for their versatility and capacity for diplomatic multi-tasking.
They protect citizens’ interest, promote international trade, and operate in many ways like embassies. In a world in which most the majority of people will soon live in cities, some of them with a population that is larger than that of scores countries, there are real limits to what diplomats based in capital cities are capable of doing.
International ambitions
Globalization requires fine-mazed local presence, certainly in cities that act as economic hubs and nodal points of all sorts of vibrant transnational activity.
It is worth pointing out that countries’ networks of embassies and consulates have a mission. They are the lasting and clearest possible statement of a governments’ international ambitions.