The problem we don't dare to solve

For the past fifteen years Europe has conducted a migration debate that goes round in circles. For and against. Open or closed. Strict or mild. Percentage points in the polls. Nitrogen at the Polish border and fences on the Mediterranean. What the discussion never does: offer a third option. A way out from which both sides benefit.

At the same time Europe has another problem it does not solve either. The ethanol factories we need for the Carbon-Alert route do not end up in the right place by themselves. Cellulose feedstock grows fastest in the tropics. The sun stands high longest. The rain falls more often. The growing seasons are year-round. An ethanol cluster in Mozambique, Brazil or Indonesia produces per hectare two to three times what a Dutch maize plant achieves — and builds a village around it.

Bring three thoughts together. Unlock three problem-locks. One way forward.

The coachman on the box sees the road. He also sees who can help steer. Not as a burden. Not as a number. But as a human being who is being asked for somewhere.

Those who wait here can lead there

In the Netherlands and across Europe, a group of people are stuck. They have arrived here. They want to work. They want to build something. They want to move forward. But our system keeps them in a waiting room — sometimes for five years, sometimes longer. No residence status, no work permit, no prospects. For those who very much want to stay here, that is painful enough. For those who did not actually want to stay here — who could not even choose where they fled to — it is outright cruel.

Imagine: the same people receive a different offer. Not "go back". Not "we will handle it". But: come and help build. We have work that fits where you come from and what you want to become. A two-year training in pellet production, distillation operation, SOFC maintenance, agricultural logistics. Then a three-year contract in a partner country in the tropics. Own house. Own salary. Own prospects. And, if they want, citizenship in that country afterwards — or back to Europe with a trade.

The figures behind this proposal are simple. Carbon-Alert at 50 GW of European rollout requires 350,000 direct jobs across the chain. A third of that — around 120,000 jobs — sits in tropical feedstock production. That is 120,000 people needed in places where they are welcome, with salaries that are good in a European context and excellent in a local context, in a role that contributes concretely to the world.

Why this is not naïve

Anyone reading this for the first time will think: this will never work. Too complicated. Too politically sensitive. Too expensive an infrastructure. Too much diplomacy. Too many risks. Three counter-arguments are predictable — three answers as well.

"The receiving countries do not want this." Incorrect. Mozambique, Tanzania, Brazil, Indonesia, Ghana, Senegal, Colombia, Peru, Vietnam — each of these countries has a national agenda for industrialisation. Not one says no to €500 million in infrastructure in return for a fifty-year feedstock agreement. The question is not whether they want to. The question is whether we dare.

"The people do not want to leave Europe." Some do not. Many do — if the offer is good. Villages full of houses, schools with internet, salaries generous in a local context and reasonable in a European context, five years of work to earn ownership. Compare that with five years of waiting in an asylum procedure without the right to work. The choice need not be imposed on anyone — only offered.

"This is colonialism under a different label." The opposite. Colonialism took people and raw materials from a country without giving anything back and without local ownership. This proposal builds cities where the inhabitants are the owners. Fifty per cent local workers, fifty per cent migrants. After fifteen years the factory becomes the property of a local co-operative. The European contribution is capital and technology for an agreed period, not ownership for ever.

What this means for the Netherlands and for Europe

In 2026 the Netherlands has 380,000 job seekers. Some of them — some who have never been able to take root here — get a fair chance at something new. That directly eases pressure on housing, on healthcare, on social security. But, more importantly: it gives people a future they could not obtain here. And it gives Europe a feedstock chain in which we bring in dependence instead of importing across a border.

Spain has 2.6 million unemployed. Italy 2.0 million. France 2.4 million. Germany 2.8 million. Every government has its hands full. No one knows what to do. A European programme that builds 20 ethanol cities in a partner country in the tropics costs less than one year of unemployment benefit in these four countries combined. And it solves two problems at once.

We have to move forward. Not stand still.

Think out of the box. Stop discussing in the same circle.

The coachman sits on the box or on the luggage rack. The cities in the tropics will be built by us — or by China. That is the choice no one names, but which lies on the table.

Anyone who believes in this believes in people

This proposal rests on one assumption. That people, given a fair chance, want to seize their own future. That an Eritrean lad now waiting three years in a Brabant asylum centre would rather live in a tropical city with good work and his own house than endlessly in uncertainty. That a Syrian teacher not allowed here to stand in front of a class would rather teach English in a new library in Mozambique than fill grocery bags at a Dutch supermarket.

Those who do not want to make that assumption do not believe in people. Those who do make it see a way out of two locked debates at once.

The coachman on the box looks ahead. Not only at the road. Also at who can ride along, who can help steer, who can help build what comes next. That is not idealism. That is simply the courage to think beyond the waiting room in which we are both sitting.