Dutch government formation negotiations collapsed Tuesday night after New Social Contract (NSC) founder Pieter Omtzigt announced he would leave the talks. Geert Wilders’ nationalist Party for Freedom’s (PVV) won a blowout victory last November, but taking office may prove more complicated.
Following a day of coalition talks, Omtzigt—who had been seen as ‘kingmaker’—announced he had decided on his party’s exit due to disagreements over managing the public purse.
While Omtzigt is willing to lend his support to a minority cabinet (without participating in it), Geert Wilders expected to form a rightist coalition government with NSC, as well as two other parties—the agrarian populist BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB), and the center-right Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD).
Wilders’ PVV won the most seats during last November’s elections, securing 37 out of 150 MP seats.
The VVD stood at 24, the fledgling NSC at 20, and BBB at 7. Together, these center-right and right-wing parties could hold a comfortable majority of 88 seats if coalition talks proved successful.
Understandably, following Omtzigt’s decision, Wilders’ reaction was one of disappointment and disbelief:
The Netherlands wants this [rightist] cabinet and now Pieter Omtzigt is throwing in the towel while we were still in talks. I don’t understand it at all.
Speaking to media later on Wednesday, Wilders said Omtzigt owes the other parties “and also the Netherlands” an explanation, adding that the NSC leader was acting “fairly disrespectfully.”
According to the PVV leader, public finances cannot be the problem.
It is “very justified that Omtzigt asked questions, but you can go on and on about that and you can talk about that with each other, in this round or in a next round [of negotiations],” he said.
Wilders went on to shame Omtzigt for running away, thereby opening the door for GroenLinks-PvdA leader and former EU ‘Climate Pope’ Frans Timmermans to enter the picture. “I believe that is not in the country’s best interest. Ultimately, voters want a center-right cabinet.”
Dilan Yesilgöz (VVD) and Caroline van der Plas (BBB) also voiced surprise. Yesilgöz (VVD) hoped all parties involved could “sit down soon to learn what exactly is going on here,” while Van Der Plas called Omtzigt’s decision “baffling.”
According to Omtzigt, the NSC learned that the state of the government’s finances is much worse than it previously thought. Given this new understanding, the party claimed it “under no circumstances wanted to make promises to the Dutch people that it knows in advance are empty promises that cannot be made good on.”
The state of the Netherlands’ public finances has been a worry, if not outright embarassment, for some time. While the main culprits are COVID-19 spending and the nation’s newly created climate fund—launched when the Senate approved an initial €35 billion investment last December— the legacy of former finance minister Sigrid Kaag also plays a role.
When she left office to take on duties as the UN’s ambassador to Gaza, Kaag left the Dutch treasury with €500 billion in national debt—its highest on record. During her catastrophic two-year tenure, the national debt increased by more than €50 billion, which in the eyes of her critics earned her the moniker of being the “worst Dutch finance minister of all time.”
This week, coalition negotiator Ronald Plasterk was to present his final report on progress made to the House of Representatives, which then would hold a debate on how to proceed. But following the breakdown in negotiations, Plasterk has called for an emergency meeting between the PVV, the BBB, the VVD, and the NSC to discuss what happened. Pieter Omtzigt is not expected to attend.
Should the formation of any coalition become unviable, there is a likelihood of fresh elections. A recent poll indicates that the PVV would snap up 50 seats in a hypothetical election held tomorrow, in a further blow to the globalist establishment parties.
