In the past we wanted Malta to be a Switzerland in the Mediterranean; in the present we want it to be the China of the Med. Both are clichés, and we succumb to them because we’re always thinking ‘Money!’ Post world recession, that is uncool; we need to think ‘Happy!’ instead.

Year after year, the Netherlands, the land of tulips, coffee shops (wink wink), windmills and dams, ranks as one of the best places in the world to live. This is not according to a Daily Mail survey, but the conclusion of experts engaged by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, who take into consideration the well-being of a nation based on how much people trust each other and the country’s equality, freedom of opinion, health and work scenarios.

So while Malta, year in year out, hovers somewhere between the 40th and the 50th place in the happy country index, the Netherlands is always in the top five. Even Unicef claims that Dutch kids are among the happiest in the world.

What makes the Dutch happy? Hah, I sniggered, that’s easy:

They can chill out, weed in hand (or in a muffin), in all those coffee shops.

Their flat land is a blessing. I have this theory that the more hilly the location, the more tempers flare (vide Gozo).

While Malta hovers somewhere between the 40th and the 50th place in the happy country index, the Netherlands is always in the top five. Even Unicef claims that Dutch kids are among the happiest in the world

They are very tall people; so they don’t need to stay forever on their tiptoes only to get a glimpse of the hairy back of the person in front of them.

But a bit of fieldwork tells me that I got it all wrong:

Dutch people are not fans of their own coffee shops, they think of them as a blip in the system and live with them for the sake of the tourism industry.

Their flat land is hassle. Most of it is below sea level, and for centuries, as one Dutch man put it, “people were standing up to their knees in mud and trying to build a society”. The Dutch perfected the art of keeping the water at bay, and in the process became experts at working together.

Being double the average height of us pint-size Maltese has its disadvantage: they even had to make a law to enlarge doorways. And it’s clear why they use bicycles to go everywhere: they just don’t fit in cars.

So we’re back to square one: what makes a Dutchman happy?

The Economist claims that their high quality of life and good nature is due to a laid-back approach to work: more than half of the Dutch work part-time.

In fact, 27 per cent of Dutch men and 77 per cent of women spend not more than 30 hours a week at work. The rest of us don’t begin to match this: only nine per cent of men and 32 per cent of women work similar kind of hours in the EU.

How did this come about? Oddly enough, the Dutch sociological history is very similar to Malta: Dutch women were latecomers to the labour market because for a long time a dual income was not a necessity for a comfortable life.

Also, Dutch politics was dominated by Christian values, and until the 1980s the focus was mainly on providing State aid so that women could stay at home with children.

This changed in the late 1980s, when the State realised that it would be a good idea to get women into the job market. But the cultural conviction that families still needed mothers home for tea time prevailed – and this is were Malta and Netherlands parted ways.

The Dutch state worked closely with employers to ensure that part-time jobs would enjoy similar legal positions to their full-time equivalents. By the start of the millennium, the right for women and men to ask for a good quality, well-paid job to be part-time was written into law.

Today, because of this flexibility, women in the Netherlands have a relatively high labour force participation rate. And because of the part-time structure, it means men and women can easily do the job sharing. Bingo: happy families.

To this day, in Malta this is very rare: most often if you can’t work at the office from dusk till dawn, it’s an adieu to the job.

There’s two other factors why the Dutch are happy. First: they come top of 28 European countries for physical exercise. Most of them exercise at least four days a week, and that does not include cycling to work. Even their Prime Minister cycles to work.

Second, they are incredibly green. The above-mentioned eco-friendly Prime Minster would never dream, say, of handing out pristine agricultural land to be built up. The historic threat of the sea means the Dutch know how to live with nature and have the utmost respect for the environment; their belief in caring for the next generation is so strong it is even integrated into the school curriculum.

There’s no beating about the bush really: here’s to a Malta which is the Netherlands in the Mediterranean.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti