The Netherlands doesn't know how to do individualism. Ploumen is talking about the need to end parallel societies but still addresses these people as if they were a community. As I wrote down in my diary on the Dutch government programme, this government is following a communautarian approach, which is consistent with the traditional approach to integration.

So I think that this position paper, from Vinocur's reporting at least, is muddled. If you think about communities it is obvious that you will have some level of separation in a society. You also have Jewish, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian communities in the Netherlands and these are not seen as problematic. So in dealing with the Turkish and Moroccan community you will have to address the aspect of where the problems lie, and in that sense trying to eradicate parallel societies and force full assimilation will not work.

There were some taboos in talking about immigrants in the ninetees, in the sense that the political top and much of the press stayed away from it, following a model of multiculturalism. But that was exploded long ago.

This change in the party's strategy has been decided at the top, by Wouter Bos. The Minister of Integration and Housing, Ella Vogelaar, fell as a result.

The Netherlands has in practice been trying confrontation for the past eight years, the only new thing being that the labour party is now also on board. I don't think it's brought much improvement over the soft approach of the ninetees.