Wilders Says Enough and Quits Dutch Government Over Asylum Dispute

Wilders is often referred to as "far right", which I find amusing. Except for his stance on the jihad and the EU, he's a standard left-winger.

From The European Conservative

By Tamás Orbán

The Dutch populist Freedom Party was given an unprecedented mandate to fix the migration crisis, but has been obstructed by its center-right partners ever since forming the government.

The Hague is in chaos after Geert Wilders, the leader of the largest party in the Dutch parliament, announced that he’s taking the right-wing populist Freedom Party (PVV/PfE) out of the government. The reason is PVV’s much-needed asylum reform proposal, which failed to gather support from smaller, center-right coalition partners despite months of endless negotiations. 

“No signature under our asylum plans … The PVV leaves the coalition,” Wilders wrote in a post on X on Tuesday, June 3rd. The party leader said he informed PM Dick Schoof that all PVV ministers will resign.

On Tuesday afternoon, Schoof officially announced the fall of the government to the media and said he would go to the king and offer the resignation of the cabinet.

The move will likely lead to new snap elections in a few months, less than two years after the previous voting in November 2023, following the collapse of the centrist government of Mark Rutte, and less than a year after the current government came to power in July last year.

Wilders’ PVV won the 2023 elections with 24%—far above the establishment parties, which barely reached the 15% mark—signaling an unprecedented demand from Dutch voters to fix the country’s worsening migration crisis, PVV’s main campaign promise. 

Since finally reaching a coalition agreement one year ago with the center-right VVD, the liberal NSC, and the farmers’ party BBB, Wilder’s Freedom Party has been constantly pursuing the EU’s “strictest” asylum reform package, as promised to voters during the campaign.

The proposal involves completely halting asylum procedures while the country eliminates its giant backlog, returning Syrian migrants now that the civil war ended, deporting migrant criminals, closing down ‘migrant hotels,’ and using the army to set up border patrols.

The plan is broadly popular among voters of all coalition partners, despite their unwillingness to back it. What’s more, nearly three-quarters of PVV voters agree that the party should leave the government if it’s not adopted, according to the latest polling data.

Still, the PVV’s inability to push it through its coalition partners, however, not only caused a worsening deadlock in the government, affecting other broader legislative work, but also caused public support for the party to plummet from a high of 33% to just 20%, although it still remains the most popular outfit in Dutch politics. 

A new election, therefore, could outsource the decision over the asylum reforms to voters once more, giving them a chance to reinforce PVV’s mandate or place their trust elsewhere.

Wilders’ wager is not without risk, however: the EU’s former ‘climate czar’ Frans Timmermans-led Labour-Green Left has grown slightly, reinforcing its position in second place at 19% in the polls. It’s trailed by the centrist VVD with 18%, and the strongly resurgent Christian Democrat CDA with 12%.

Unsurprisingly, the loudest critic of Wilder’s move to quit the coalition is the liberal NSC, which finished at fourth place with 13% back in 2023 but has since plummeted to just 1%, making it almost certain to drop out of parliament.

The center-right VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz also expressed anger over the move, calling it ‘irresponsible’ to take the government while “there is a war on the continent.” 

With a caretaker government in place for the next few months, a landmark decision about increasing defense spending that’s scheduled before this month’s NATO summit in the Hague will have to be delayed.