The party of outgoing Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has been threatened with expulsion from the liberal-left Renew group in the European Parliament for entering into a governing coalition with Geert Wilders’s party at home.
Renew chairwoman Valérie Hayer said the conservative-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) party cannot continue to be a member of Renew if it intends to govern with Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV).
For Renew to continue to work with the VVD would be “an option which is not acceptable to me,” since they would “not respect our values,” Hayer (of French president Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party) said in an interview with French news channel BFM TV.
Hayer’s chiding comes five days after the VVD announced it had entered a coalition agreement with three other parties, including Geert Wilders’ nationalist PVV.
At that time, Hayer said the deal was “the opposite of what we defend in terms of values, the rule of law, the economy, the climate and, of course, Europe,” despite the fact that the four parties in the coalition collectively received more than half the vote in the 2023 Dutch election.
The budding coalition, so toxic to Hayer, is in reality a healthy example of democracy in action: political parties setting aside their—sometimes significant—differences in order to reflect the will of the people. It is also typical of the Dutch way of life: A small country where the population, despite differences, finds a way to coexist and thrive.
But Hayer is currently in full election mode. As Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National is expected to win twice as many votes as her own party in the European elections, she is unlikely to want to weaken the Renew group by having the VVD ejected before that time.
Instead, she said, there would be a vote on the matter within Renew the day after the elections.
However, it is not clear whether such a vote would succeed. According to the group’s own rules, it would require a nod from a two-thirds majority of their members, coming from at least five different countries.
While the group is dominated by French MEPs who are likely to back Hayer, it is far less certain whether those hailing from other nations would be equally willing to give the VVD the boot, although they could still sanction the party by refusing it any high-level positions within the EU apparatus.
It would not be the first time, either. Initially, the VVD’s lead candidate for the European elections and Renew deputy leader Malik Azmani was pegged to become the group’s new chairman. But since his party agreed to negotiate with Geert Wilders’ PVV, the French contingent sabotaged his nomination.
Azmani himself has already ruled out cooperation with Identity and Democracy, the group of which the PVV is a part, at the European level. His own party’s coalition with the PVV should be seen purely “in a national context,” he explained.
Given that Hayer’s party is expected to lose rather badly in the European elections at home, her legitimacy as the Renew group’s chairman in the European Parliament could be put into question, making it much harder to rally her French colleagues around sanctioning the VVD for governing with Wilders.
