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

Having established in the previous parts that we have chosen this ourselves, we must now map honestly who exactly we chose. Which party wanted what. Which union demanded what. What employers called for. And what Brussels — meant to be the engine of the continent — is actually achieving right now.

This is not a pamphlet. This is honest cartography. Because 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 on a different carriage, and nobody is looking at the locomotive.

The Netherlands — the polder pushes left

GroenLinks-PvdA

The clearest plunder coalition. Jesse Klaver hammered on 4 June 2026 in the House of Representatives literally on "fair taxation of high profits and large wealth". The position is consistent: keep the welfare state intact by taxing the top more heavily, not by asking the bottom to work more or making the system more sober. The party views wealth as democratically suspect, entrepreneurship as useful so long as it remains regulable, and successful Dutch citizens 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 whom the extra tax does not reach. It is electorally logical and morally self-satisfying at once. What it lacks is any substantive analysis of what happens when the cash cow refuses to graze any further.

FNV — the union

The FNV actively supports this course. The ultimatum from the trade union movement on 4 June 2026 on spending cuts — presented to the cabinet — is not about working for what you receive. It is about: keep benefits at their level, pay for it with money from "the very richest". Tuur Elzinga has consistently carried that message. The union in 2026 is no longer an organisation for workers. 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, say, 1985, which still negotiated wages in exchange for productivity.

D66

Voted for the new box-3 law on 12 February 2026. Not from conviction, but because the electorate expects it. D66 above all does not want to be seen as antisocial. The party that once embraced entrepreneurship has in two decades become a progressive-bureaucratic movement that goes along with the zeitgeist. International competitiveness is occasionally mentioned, but never consistently translated into policy.

VVD

The party expected to defend entrepreneurs also voted for box 3. There is a tragedy in that. The VVD over the past fifteen years has lost the moral basis for opposing wealth taxes. By itself supporting public expenditure for decades that is now unaffordable, the party is complicit in the problem it rhetorically combats. The result: soft opposition, with the occasional brave remark from an individual MP that nobody quotes.

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 traceable in the current generation of politicians. Pieter Omtzigt and NSC picked up budgetary discipline in the 2023 campaign but without fundamentally challenging the redistribution model.

PVV and BBB

Here it gets interesting. Wilders says: "ordinary Dutch people are paying 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 bringing the productive class into the analysis. BBB has an agrarian undertone — the farmer as victim of Hague policy — but does not extend that to the broader entrepreneurial class.

Both parties absorb the anger that will soon be far greater. But neither has a coherent account of how productive prosperity is built. They point, rightly, at the problems. They offer no solution.

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 rather than a wealth accretion tax. That is technically the correct argument. The Dutch Startup Association has literally urged the Senate not to proceed with the law, because it "undermines confidence in the investment climate".

But the discussion is conducted on the terrain of technique, not of principle. The question of whether the Dutch state has the right at all to tax wealth annually — a new form of taxation that does not connect to what a person earns but to what they have 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 beat technical ones, even when they are wrong.

Germany — the coalition tears under its own words

SPD

Wants to raise the top income tax rate from 42 to 49 per cent, and supports the idea of a wealth tax for those with more than twenty million euros net. Marcel Fratzscher of the DIW has presented the arithmetic: two per cent wealth tax yields roughly €42 billion. "The state could use that money to lower taxes on labour and businesses," he says. That way he sells the German wealth tax as if it turns out net positive for entrepreneurs. That is academically clever and politically deceptive: once the levy is in place, the idea of compensation always disappears into the general revenue.

CDU and CSU

Officially oppose raising the top tax rate and oppose wealth taxes. But cracks are already appearing. At the end of May 2026, first Union politicians showed themselves "open to compromise" on raising the Reichensteuersatz from 45 to 47.5 per cent. The course is starting to bend, not because CDU leadership is convinced, but because the SPD will no longer cooperate on other tax reductions without "the rich contributing more". That is how principles evaporate in coalition politics.

Bündnis 90/Die Grünen

Karl Haeusgen — interesting, because he himself heads the Greens' business network, former president of the German machinery federation VDMA — advocates higher income tax and higher inheritance tax. That is remarkable: a named entrepreneur who nevertheless argues for heavier taxation, because he believes "wealthy entrepreneurial families should bear a greater tax burden". A rational self-destruction, fed by the guilt of the successful German.

AfD

Absorbs the anger on the other side. Not about plunder, but about what is done with the plundered money — above all migration, asylum costs, climate expenditure. 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 chairman Stefan Körzell repeated the DGB proposal: tax every euro of wealth above one million euros net, for married couples above two million. Plus an extra Vermögensabgabe of ten per cent on all wealth above ten million — spread over twenty years. Revenue: €350 billion. "Instead of putting the knife into ordinary working people, the government must finally take on the profiteers of unequal distribution," said Körzell.

The language is telling. "Profiteers." That is what the German union calls the entrepreneurs running the factories where DGB members work. Who pay the pension contributions DGB members expect to enjoy in twenty years. Who supply the tax money from which DGB secretaries are financed. Profiteers from the society that would not be a society without them.

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" — substance-destroying effect — of wealth taxes. Technically correct: a wealth tax on illiquid business assets forces the 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 undone.

Are they heeded? Not really. Familienunternehmer is in the German media the voice of what are called "the rich". The employees of those same family businesses are portrayed in DGB reports as victims of capital. The same company is divided along two axes: the owner as profiteer, the employee as victim. No attention to the fact that without the former, the latter would not exist either.

France — the battleground under pure tension

La France Insoumise (LFI)

Mélenchon and his allies argue for the full reinstatement of the ISF — the wealth tax Macron abolished in 2017 — plus a tax on "superprofits", plus a sweeping reform of inheritance tax. The programme is consistent: SMIC to €1,700, retirement back to 60, ISF restored, dividends taxed as wages. It is the purest plunder variant in Europe, presented under the banner of justice.

Parti Socialiste

Lighter, but in the same direction. The Socialists propose reinstating a wealth tax on assets above €100 million — the Zucman norm, the same two per cent on the California ballot. Olivier Faure positions this as a "socially acceptable" alternative to the €44 billion in cuts the government wants. A deliberately moral framing: choose between holding back the poor or taxing the super-rich. The middle path — promising less, living more soberly — is not raised.

Rassemblement National (RN)

Marine Le Pen has focused mainly on opposing limits to the CPF — the personal training account — not on taxes on holding companies or rolling back the Pacte Dutreil for family businesses. RN picks up the underdog of the working class, but cheaply leaves the attack on the productive upper tier unchallenged. A tactically smart position: not defending the rich, because that is electorally unsellable; but presenting the ordinary French person as victim.

Renaissance and Les Républicains

Macron's movement and the Gaullists are fighting behind the scenes. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu filed a challenge at the Conseil constitutionnel at the end of May 2026 to have three fiscal measures against "the rich" reviewed before they take effect. That reflects the centre-right position: not principally against extra taxation of wealth, but worried about legal viability. The same pragmatism D66 and VVD exhibit. Cautiously bending, hoping it will be less bad than the left wants.

Medef — the French employers

They protest, but cautiously. Medef has systematically lost ground in public debate in recent years. Patrick Martin, the current chairman, speaks in technical terms about "investment climate" and "competitiveness". Nobody listens. The French intellectual climate views the entrepreneur as suspect, and that does not change through business logic.

The three patterns that emerge

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

One — the left wants to harvest 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 — centre-right bends along, because it has no alternative. VVD, CDU, Renaissance, Les Républicains: they vote for what they rhetorically oppose. Their problem is that for decades they supported the welfare state and now have no moral basis to oppose financing it. They lose every debate because they cannot clearly articulate why taxing wealth is wrong, while they consider taxing income normal. The difference between the two — taxing profit when realised, or taxing wealth before it even exists — is technically crystal clear, but morally impossible to explain to an electorate that thinks in soundbites.

Three — populist right points, but does not build. PVV, AfD, RN, BBB, FvD: they absorb the anger that plunder produces, but 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 rightward shift across all of Europe would not stop the plunder. It would only change the scapegoat.

My opinion: What is genuinely absent across the whole of Europe is a political movement willing to say 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 — "make the rich pay more" — exists only as an arithmetical fiction, not as a durable solution. No European party dares say this. Not the left, because it undermines their moral premise. Not centre-right, because it costs votes. Not right-populist, because 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 way

Above this national theatre sits the European Commission, officially meant to be the engine of the European revival. 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 about an "important shift" — competitiveness measured by human capital, skills, and social resilience. The recommendations fall into four categories: fiscal stability, innovation, business environment, energy, and social justice.

Sounds reasonable. It is empty.

Read the specific recommendations to member states and you find virtually nothing concrete about what must be done to protect the productive class in Europe. Plenty of language about "investing in skills", "improving working conditions", "protecting living standards". It is administrative rhetoric that can be filled in any direction. A union leader hears solidarity measures in it. An entrepreneur hears deregulation. Both are right: nothing clear is stated.

The Draghi story

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

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 double, because the problem has grown through inaction. The engine runs, but in neutral. Nobody dares engage the gear.

Why Brussels does not know how to proceed

This is not incompetence. It is a structural problem built into the European institutions.

One — Brussels cannot levy tax. The European Commission has no fiscal sovereignty. It can propose directives — such as the planned European minimum exit tax — but implementation rests with the member states. When Germany says: we will 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 calculates on the wrong timeline. The Commission works on seven-year budgets (2028–2034), on strategic plans for 2030, on AI roadmaps for 2035. Fine on paper. But the productive exodus is happening now, in 2026. The British 16,500 millionaires who left last year will not return because the Commission might coordinate a tax measure in 2030. By 2034, when the budget period begins, the European capital fabric will be even thinner than now.

Three — Brussels is caught between the 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 retention of fiscal sovereignty and their own room for competitive tax policy. The Commission cannot serve both sides at once and therefore does nothing that makes any real 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 consequence is a fundamental deafness to what productivity actually requires: room for risk, affordable energy, long-term certainty over fiscal policy, craftsmanship passed from generation to generation. Brussels produces documents. Documents do not produce prosperity.

Five — the Eurobureaucracy has given itself self-preservation as its goal. The Commission is not structured to restore Europe, because 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, which can no longer do anything on its own, does. It is institutional self-denial to say this openly, but it is true.

What this means

The political map of Europe in June 2026 is this. A European left flank harvesting with moral certainty. A centre-right bending along without knowing how to do otherwise. A populist right pointing without building. A Brussels institution producing documents but no products. Employers' organisations protesting technically but losing morally. Trade unions indirectly helping undermine their own workers by declaring employers the enemy.

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

They stand alone. Statistically alone — less than five per cent of the European electorate. Politically alone — no party dares openly serve their interest. Culturally alone — the media present them as profiteers. Morally alone — no broadly shared narrative says why they are valuable to the society that has plundered them.

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

Conclusion of the five-part series

The train is not standing still because there are no drivers. The train is standing still because every driver is pushing a different carriage in the opposite direction, and nobody is looking at the locomotive.

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

And the people who create the prosperity — whom we have called "the productive class" throughout this series, the entrepreneurs, inventors, manufacturers, family businesses — watch from the other side of the station. They have already packed their bags. They are waiting for the right train. Not the train that cannot get on the rails in Brussels, 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 in 47 European meetings. Fifteen per cent of it will be executed. By the time it could have changed anything, the train will have arrived in Singapore.

We set this up ourselves. Nobody 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 longer any exit within the system. The exit lies outside Europe. For the productive ones, at any rate. For the rest of us, who have voted for all of this, there is no exit left.