The Dutch government, the fourth under long-serving Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD), has collapsed, various news agencies and Dutch media report. According to the agency, Rutte has handed in his resignation.
For the last three days, Rutte’s four-party coalition government had been teetering on the brink over its failure to agree on measures to curb the influx of asylum seekers.
On Friday evening, hope was slim as most of the ministers involved gathered for a final consultation at the Ministry of General Affairs.
State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Eric van der Burg had put one final proposal on the table. In this proposal, he suggested a so-called ‘stop button’, which could temporarily suspend the right to family reunification when the asylum processing chain experiences a backlog.
The social-liberal D66 and in particular the Christian-democratic ChristenUnie (CU), which maintains a far more liberal position on the matter, however, balked at the suggestion, at which point negotiations broke down.
Only this week, CU chairwoman Mirjam Bikker said that the ChristenUnie, as a “pro-family party,” could not agree to refusing asylum seekers their right to family reunification.
For PM Mark Rutte’s right-liberal VVD party, reducing the influx of asylum seekers had become somewhat of a hill to die on. Rutte himself had made express promises to his party and voting block that he would come up with concrete proposals in this area.
While special cabinet meetings on the broader issue of migration had been held frequently, and had achieved results, arriving at a concrete policy on asylum remained elusive.
Asylum applications in the Netherlands jumped by a third last year to over 46,000, while government projections indicate an increase to over 70,000 this year.
This story is developing.
