Warum erhalte ich eine NullPointerException, wenn ich von Java aus eine Verbindung zu einer MySQL-Datenbank herstelle?

import java.sql.*;

public class Squirrel {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String user;
        String password;
        Connection connection;
        Statement statement;
        try {
            Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");

            connection = DriverManager.getConnection(
                "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306", user, password);

            statement = connection.createStatement();

            // Other code
        } catch (ClassNotFoundException | SQLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            try {
                if (statement != null) {
                    statement.close();
                }
                if (connection != null) {
                    connection.close();
                }
            } catch (SQLException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
}

com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLNonTransientConnectionException: Could not create connection to database server.
...
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getServerCharset(ConnectionImpl.java:2997)

<dependency>
    <groupId>mysql</groupId>
    <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
    <version>8.0.12</version>
</dependency>

jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8&useJDBCCompliantTimezoneShift=true&useLegacyDatetimeCode=false&serverTimezone=UTC