EUobserver
Dutch government’s attempt to keep Shell fails
By WESTER VAN GAAL
A last-ditch attempt to keep the oil and gas giant Shell in the Netherlands has failed.
Shell had pressured the Dutch government to drop its dividend tax for “16 years” chief executive Ben van Beurden told newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad.
Hoping to persuade the oil major from leaving after more than a century, outgoing economic affairs minister Stef Blok and finance minister Hans Vijlbrief tried to barter a deal with representatives from other parties in a last-ditch effort to hastily scrap the dividend tax, before Shell’s planned 10 December general shareholder meeting.
But on Tuesday Blok and Vijlbrief told Dutch parliament that “at the moment there are no concrete measures that we intend to take.”
“Scrapping the dividend tax is no solution, it’s blackmail,” Green party leader Jesse Klaver tweeted ahead of the parliamentary debate on the topic.
