Placement based on public statements and voting behaviour, May–June 2026.

If in the previous parts we established that we chose this ourselves, we must now honestly map who exactly we chose. Which party wanted what. Which trade union demanded what. What the employers cried out. And what Brussels — intended as the engine of the continent — is at present making of it.

This is no pamphlet. This is an honest cartography. For only when you know who sits on which side of the table can you understand why the train is not getting back on the rails. Everyone is pushing at a different carriage, and no-one is looking at the locomotive.

The Netherlands — the polder pushes to the left

GroenLinks-PvdA

The clearest plunder coalition. Jesse Klaver hammered on 4 June 2026 in the House of Representatives literally on a "fair tax on high profits and large wealth". The position is consistent: keep the welfare state upright by taxing the top more heavily, not by asking the bottom to work more or making the system soberer. The party sees wealth as democratically suspect, entrepreneurship as useful as long as it is regulable, and successful Dutchmen as candidates for extra contribution.

Their electorate: highly educated civil servants, teachers, care workers, people in the public sector. People who themselves have no wealth and on whom the extra tax does not land. It is electorally logical and morally self-satisfying at the same time. What is missing is any substantive analysis of what happens when the milk cow refuses to keep grazing.

FNV — the trade union

The FNV actively supports this course. The union's ultimatum of 4 June 2026 on the budget cuts — put to the cabinet — is not about working for what you get. It is about: keep benefits at level, pay for it with money from "the very richest". Tuur Elzinga has carried that message consistently. In 2026 the trade union is no longer an organisation for working people. It is an organisation for protecting the social contract as it once was, financed by others. That is a fundamental difference from the FNV of roughly 1985, which still negotiated wages in exchange for productivity.

D66

Voted for the new Box 3 law on 12 February 2026. Not out of conviction, but because the electorate expects it. D66 above all does not want to be labelled antisocial. The party that once embraced entrepreneurship has in two decades turned into a progressive-bureaucratic current that goes along with the spirit of the age. International competitiveness is mentioned now and then, but never consistently translated into policy.

VVD

The party supposed to defend entrepreneurs also voted for Box 3. There is tragedy in that. Over the past fifteen years the VVD has lost the moral basis to oppose wealth tax. By itself supporting public spending for decades that is now unaffordable, the party is jointly guilty of the problem it rhetorically opposes. The result: soft opposition, with here and there a brave statement from an individual MP no-one cites.

CDA and NSC

Also voted for Box 3. Centre politics that sees itself above all as a bridge and therefore bends in every direction. The CDA tradition of protecting the family business is barely recognisable in the current generation of politicians. Pieter Omtzigt and NSC picked up budget discipline in the 2023 campaign but without fundamentally challenging the redistribution model.

PVV and BBB

Here it gets interesting. Wilders says: "ordinary Dutchmen are going to pay for the consequences of immigration", and wants the problem solved by closing borders and denying migrants benefits for fifteen years. That is a different reading of the same problem, but without including the productive class in the analysis. BBB has an agrarian undertone — the farmer as victim of The Hague policy — but does not broaden it to the wider entrepreneurial class.

Both parties catch the anger that will grow much larger. But neither has a coherent story about how productive prosperity is built. They point, rightly, at the problems. A solution they do not offer.

VNO-NCW and the employers

Here lies the most striking silence. VNO-NCW publicly criticised the new Box 3 levy on 22 May 2026, and argues for a capital gains tax instead of a capital accretion tax. That is technically the right argument. The Dutch Startup Association literally called on the Senate not to proceed with the law, because it "undermines confidence in the establishment climate".

But the discussion is conducted on the terrain of technique, not of principle. The question whether the Dutch state has any right at all to tax wealth annually — a new form of tax not linked to what a person earns but to what he has built up — is not raised by VNO-NCW. Too politically incorrect. The result: the employers' organisation loses the debate even in its most defensive form, because its argument is technical and the opposing argument is moral. Moral arguments always win against technical ones, even when they are wrong.

Germany — the coalition tears under its own words

SPD

Wants to raise the Spitzensteuersatz from 42 to 49 per cent, and supports the idea of a wealth tax on those with more than twenty million euros net. Marcel Fratzscher of the DIW has put the arithmetic: two per cent wealth tax raises about 42 billion euros. "The state could use that money to lower tax on labour and business," he says. Thereby he sells the German wealth tax as if it were net positive for entrepreneurs. That is academically clever and politically deceptive: once the levy is in place, the idea of compensation always vanishes into general funds.

CDU and CSU

Officially oppose an increase of the top tax rate and a wealth tax. But cracks are already showing. End of May 2026 the first Union politicians showed themselves "willing to compromise" over an increase of the Reichensteuersatz from 45 to 47.5 per cent. The course is beginning to bend, not because the CDU leadership is convinced, but because the SPD will no longer cooperate on other tax cuts without "the rich contributing more". That is how principles evaporate in coalition politics.

Bündnis 90/Die Grünen

Karl Haeusgen — interesting, because he is himself head of the Greens' entrepreneur network, former president of the German Machine Builders' Federation VDMA — advocates higher income tax and higher inheritance tax. That is remarkable: an entrepreneur of note who nevertheless argues for heavier taxation, because he believes "wealthy entrepreneurial families should bear a larger tax burden". A rational self-destruction, fed by the successful German's sense of guilt.

AfD

Catches the anger on the other side. Not about plunder, but about what they do with the plucked money — above all migration, asylum care, climate spending. The same pattern as with PVV: a pointing, not a building party.

DGB — the German trade union federation

Here it gets hard. On 3 June 2026 deputy chair Stefan Körzell repeated the DGB proposal: tax every euro of wealth above one million euros net, for married couples above two million. Plus an additional Vermögensabgabe of ten per cent on all wealth above ten million — spread over twenty years. Yield: 350 billion. "Instead of putting the axe to ordinary working people, the government should finally tackle the profiteers of unequal distribution," Körzell said.

The language is telling. "Profiteers." That is what the German trade union calls the entrepreneurs who run the factories where DGB members work. Who pay the pension premiums the DGB members expect to enjoy in twenty years. Who deliver the tax money out of which the DGB secretaries are financed. Profiteers of the society that without them would not be a society.

BDI and Die Familienunternehmer

The German employers' side. The BDI protests against every new levy, but cautiously. Die Familienunternehmer, the German family-business association, goes further: they literally warn of the "substanzvernichtende Wirkung" of wealth tax. Substance-destroying. That is technically correct — a wealth tax on non-liquid business assets forces sale or fragmentation of the company to pay the levy. It is the cruellest form of industrial damage, because it comes slowly and cannot be reversed.

Are they listened to? Not really. Familienunternehmer is in the German media the voice of what is called "the rich". The workers of those same family firms are presented in DGB reports as victims of capital. The same firm is divided along two axes: the owner as profiteer, the worker as victim. No attention to the fact that without the first, the second would not be there either.

France — the theatre of battle under pure tension

La France Insoumise (LFI)

Mélenchon and his people argue for full reinstatement of the ISF — the wealth tax Macron abolished in 2017 — plus a tax on "super-profits", plus a large-scale reform of inheritance tax. The programme is consistent: SMIC to 1,700 euros, pension back to 60, restore ISF, tax dividends as wages. It is the purest variant of plunder in Europe, presented under the flag of justice.

Parti Socialiste

Lighter, but in the same direction. The socialists propose reinstating a wealth tax on assets above one hundred million euros — the Zucman norm, the same two per cent on the Californian ballot. Olivier Faure positions this as a "socially acceptable" alternative to the 44 billion euros in cuts the government wants. A deliberately moral framing: choose between squeezing the poor or taxing the super-rich. The middle way — namely: promise less, live more soberly — does not come up.

Rassemblement National (RN)

Marine Le Pen has above all resisted limiting the CPF — the personal training account — not the taxes on holdings or the rolling-back of the Pacte Dutreil for family businesses. RN picks up the underdog of the working class, but cheaply leaves the assault on the productive top untouched. A tactically clever position: do not defend the rich, because that is electorally unsellable; do present the ordinary Frenchman as victim.

Renaissance and Les Républicains

Macron's movement and the Gaullists are fighting behind the scenes. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu at the end of May 2026 lodged an appeal at the Conseil constitutionnel to have three fiscal measures against "the rich" tested in advance before they take effect. That reflects the centre-right position: not principally against taxing wealth extra, but concerned about legal sustainability. The same pragmatism D66 and VVD show in the Netherlands. Bend along carefully, hoping it will be less bad than the left wants.

Medef — the French employers

Protest, but cautiously. In recent years Medef has systematically lost ground in the public debate. Patrick Martin, the current president, speaks in technical terms of "investment climate" and "competitiveness". No-one listens. The French intellectual climate sees the entrepreneur as a suspect, and that does not change through business logic.

The three patterns that show themselves

Whoever lays the Dutch, German and French party landscapes side by side sees three patterns that are everywhere the same.

One — the left wants to pluck more, and does so with moral clarity. GroenLinks-PvdA, SPD, LFI, Parti Socialiste, partly Bündnis 90: they have a coherent story and a reliable base. Their moral framing — "the strong must contribute more" — is electorally robust and culturally dominant. Whoever opposes them bears the burden of proof.

Two — the centre-right bends along, because it cannot do otherwise. VVD, CDU, Renaissance, Les Républicains: they vote for what they rhetorically oppose. Their problem is that they have supported the welfare state for decades and now have no moral basis to oppose its financing. They lose every discussion because they cannot articulate clearly why taxing wealth is wrong, while taxing income they find normal. The difference between the two — taxing profit once realised, or taxing wealth before it even exists — is technically crystal-clear, but morally cannot be explained to an electorate that thinks in soundbites.

Three — the populist right points but does not build. PVV, AfD, RN, BBB, FvD: they catch the anger that plunder produces, but they direct it elsewhere. At migrants. At Brussels. At the "elite". Not at the plunder itself. That is electorally logical — their voters have no wealth and do not feel addressed by a defence of it — but it means that even a shift to the right across Europe would not stop the plunder. It would only change the scapegoat.

My opinion: What is really missing across Europe is a political current that says what is simply true: the welfare state as we have built it is structurally no longer financeable from the production we still deliver. We must choose between producing more or distributing less. A third option — "let the rich pay more" — exists only as an arithmetic fiction, not as a durable solution. No European party dares to say this. Not the left, for it undermines their moral starting-point. Not the centre-right, for it damages their vote. Not the right-populist, for it would explain to their electorate that they do bear responsibility. The silence is unanimous, and therefore total.

Brussels — the engine runs, but does not know which direction to go

Above this national stage sits the European Commission, which officially must be the engine of the European resurrection. What is it doing in June 2026?

On 3 June the Commission presented the 2026 European Semester Spring Package. Roxana Mînzatu and Valdis Dombrovskis spoke in Brussels of an "important shift" — competitiveness measured through human capital, skills, and social resilience. The recommendations fall into four categories: fiscal stability, innovation, business climate, energy and social justice.

Sounds reasonable. It is empty.

Read the specific recommendations to member states and you find almost nothing concrete about what should be done to protect the productive class in Europe. Plenty of language about "investment in skills", "improvement of working conditions", "protection of living standards". It is administrative rhetoric that can be filled in every direction. A trade-union leader hears solidarity measures in it. An entrepreneur hears deregulation in it. Both are right: nothing clear is said.

The Draghi story

Mario Draghi wrote in 2024 three hundred pages of research for the Commission on how Europe should restore its competitiveness. Investments of 800 billion euros per year. A European AI strategy. A common capital market. Energy independence. It is the most serious piece of work a former Italian prime minister and ECB president has delivered.

Of those 800 billion, fifteen per cent has been realised in two years. The European Banking Federation reported on 10 June 2026 that the "competitiveness bill" is now not 800 billion but 1.4 trillion — almost a doubling, because the problem has grown through inactivity. The engine runs, but in neutral. No-one dares to put it in gear.

Why Brussels does not know how to go on

This is not incompetence. It is a structural problem the European institutions have architecturally.

One — Brussels cannot levy taxes. The European Commission has no fiscal sovereignty. It can propose directives — such as the planned European minimum exit tax — but implementation lies with the member states. When Germany says: we raise our wealth tax, Brussels can do nothing. When Italy raises its 24-bis regime to €300,000, Brussels can do nothing. The Commission can "recommend" competitiveness, but it cannot enforce it.

Two — Brussels reckons on the wrong timeline. The Commission works on seven-year budgets (2028-2034), on strategic plans for 2030, on AI roadmaps for 2035. Nice on paper. But the productive exodus is happening now, in 2026. The British 16,500 millionaires who left last year do not come back because the Commission may in 2030 coordinate a tax measure. By 2034, when the budget period begins, the European capital fabric will be even thinner than now.

Three — Brussels is caught between member states. The large countries — Germany, France, Italy, Spain — want more fiscal coordination and higher taxes on capital. The small countries — Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Malta, Estonia — want to preserve fiscal sovereignty and their own room for competitive tax policy. The Commission cannot serve both parties at once and therefore does nothing that really makes a difference.

Four — Brussels does not understand production. The current Commission is filled with lawyers, economists, political scientists. No engineers. No industrial entrepreneurs. No people who have ever run a factory or sold a patent. The result is a fundamental deafness to what productivity truly requires: room for risk, affordable energy, long-term certainty over fiscal policy, craftsmanship handed on from generation to generation. Brussels produces documents. Documents produce no prosperity.

Five — the Euro-bureaucracy has given itself self-preservation as its goal. The Commission is not set up to restore Europe, for its raison d'être lies in coordination between member states. The weaker the member states, the stronger Brussels. A strong Europe with sovereign member states — as under Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand — did not need Brussels. A weak Europe, that can no longer do anything by itself, does. It is institutional self-denial to speak of this aloud, but it is true.

What this means

The political map of Europe in June 2026 is this. A European left-wing that plucks with moral certainty. A centre-right that bends along without knowing how else. A populist right that points without building. A Brussels institution that produces documents but not products. Employers' organisations that protest technically but lose morally. Trade unions indirectly helping to undermine their own workers by declaring the employers enemies.

None of these parties can solve the problem alone. That is the core. The productive class — the entrepreneurs, the inventors, the patent holders, the family firm — no longer has political representation in Europe. Not the left, for it has declared them enemy. Not the centre-right, for it no longer dares to defend them. Not the populist right, for its attention is elsewhere. Not Brussels, for it can do nothing.

She stands alone. Statistically alone — less than five per cent of the European electorate. Politically alone — no party dares serve her interest openly. Culturally alone — the media present her as profiteer. Morally alone — no widely shared story says why she is valuable to the society that plucked her.

And without that productive class — without the people who run factories, exploit patents, push through innovations — there is no European future. Not in fifty years, not in twenty, not in ten.

Close of the five-part series

The train does not stand still because there are no drivers. The train stands still because every driver pushes a different carriage in a different direction, and no-one looks at the locomotive.

The Dutch coalition bends along. The German coalition tears under its own words. The French Republic fights in its own Constitutional Court against itself. Brussels produces documents fifteen per cent of which is implemented, and which in the meantime grow older than the problem itself.

And the people who make the prosperity — those we have called in this series the "productive class", the entrepreneurs, inventors, manufacturers, family firms — watch from the other side of the station. They have already packed their bags. They wait for the right train. Not the train that in Brussels does not get on the rails, but the train to Singapore, to Dubai, to Texas, to Lugano, to Ticino.

When that train departs, and they are on it, Brussels will appoint a new commissioner to "counter the exodus". That will produce the 350th report on European competitiveness. That report will be discussed at 47 European meetings. Fifteen per cent of that will be implemented. By the time it could have changed anything, the train will have arrived in Singapore.

We set it up like this ourselves. No-one else. We vote. We support. We look away. We have built the architecture in which nothing can change.

This is the political landscape. Whoever sees it also sees why there is no way out within the system. The way out lies outside Europe. For the productives at any rate. For the rest of us, who voted for all this, there is no way out any more.