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The Netherlands

Rutte’s liberals eclipses Dutch populists as voters go to the polls

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Mark Rutte, if polls are correct, will lead his VVD to victory on March 15 — and another term as prime minister. (ANP)

Everything’s coming up Rutte.

Mark Rutte, that is — the prime minister of The Netherlands who will almost certainly find his way to a third term as prime minister after tomorrow’s election.

Even earlier this year, when Geert Wilders’s hard-right Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom) held a substantial lead, it was always virtually assured that Rutte would return as prime minister. Consistently, even as the PVV topped polls, Rutte’s center-right, liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) continued to follow behind in second place, leading the race among the PVV’s mainstream opponents. All along, Wilders’s goal was never forming a government, but the hollow victory of placing first among a half-dozen parties bunched together between 10% and 20% in the polls.

Over the last two weeks, even that has changed to Wilders’s detriment.

The VVD eclipsed the PVV in polls at the end of February, and one shock poll from Ipsos on the eve of the election showed the PVV sliding to fifth place. At a time when Rutte is embroiled in a high-profile diplomatic spat with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (over whether Turkish ministers should be holding campaign rallies in The Netherlands for next month’s Turkish constitutional referendum), Wilders still seems to be losing steam.

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RELATED: Trump effect — Europe turning toward integration,
away from populists

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Both inside Europe and beyond, the Wilders threat was always smaller than the amount of coverage he’s received. Even when the PVV was leading, no other major party was willing to work with Wilders and the PVV’s toxic brand. Even with the highest number of seats in the Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives), the PVV would fall far short of the majority it would need to form a government. Mostly, that’s due to the PVV’s hardline views on immigration, Islam and the European Union. But it’s also because Wilders proved an unreliable ally to Rutte when he withdrew the PVV’s support for Rutte’s minority government in 2012 over spending, forcing snap elections — a gambit that backfired when the PVV lost nine seats.

What’s very much true — and always has been true — is that support across all parties in tomorrow’s election in The Netherlands could be so dispersed that no party wins more than even 17% of the vote. It could usher in the most fragmented parliament in postwar history, and it will force Rutte to navigate coalition negotiations that include four or even five parties. Don’t hold your breath for the kind of quick deal that followed the 2012 election, the ‘purple’ coalition between Rutte’s liberals and the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party).

Labour’s support has collapsed in the ensuing five years. Junior coalition parties are rarely rewarded by voters, but many Labour supporters believe the party far too willing to compromise with Rutte on spending after Labour waged a popular campaign against budget austerity. (It is still projected to win between nine and 14 seats in the election under a new leader, Lodewijk Asscher.)

If the VVD and the PVV finish first and second, respectively, as most polls still forecast, the race for third place is murkier. The conservative Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal), the center-left/liberal Democraten 66 (Democrats 66) and the leftist GroenLinks (Green Left) are all surging, and the CDA and D66 are widely tipped to enter government after coalition negotiations. GroenLinks is likely to make the strongest gains of any party (more even than Wilders) after the successful campaign of its fresh-faced 30-year-old leader, Jesse Klaver.

If there’s any consensus among the Dutch electorate, voters are choosing from a group of five or six parties, each dedicated to European integration, liberal democracy and moderate policy prescriptions — not fear-mongering xenophobia. No matter what happens tomorrow, Wilders will have a smaller role in shaping Dutch policy than, say, the more circumspect D66 leader Alexander Pechtold, who could become Rutte’s deputy prime minister in a new coalition. Pechtold may not have the international profile that Wilders has acquired with his ‘Make The Netherlands Ours Again’ histrionics, but he could be in a position to push the next government to a more pro-immigrant and pro-European orientation.

None of this, most especially the PVV’s apparent collapse, should be shocking.

Continue reading Rutte’s liberals eclipses Dutch populists as voters go to the polls →

The Netherlands

Meet Jesse Klaver, the 30-year-old Dutch leader of the surging Green-Left Party

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Jesse Klaver, the youthful leader of GroenLinks, hopes to make his party a player for the first time in the Dutch House of Representatives. (Facebook)

The first thing you notice about Jesse Klaver is just how much he looks like Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

The second thing you notice is that he’s so young — at 30 years old, he’s a full decade and a half younger than Trudeau and between 12 and 24 years younger than the other major Dutch party leaders.

But the more important point about Klaver, who has also been likened to John F. Kennedy, is that he’s making his leftist GroenLinks (Green-Left) a genuine player in Dutch politics for the first time since it came into existence in 1989. If polls are correct, GroenLinks will surge from just four seats to as many as 20 seats after the Dutch electorate votes in two weeks.

Klaver is the freshest face among the half-dozen or so party leaders who will be forced to work together after the March 15 election to forge a new government. Unlike in past elections, GroenLinks could be a key player in what will likely be a four- or five-party coalition that forms the next Dutch government. It’s very unlikely that Klaver would agree to bring his party into any coalition headed by current prime minister Mark Rutte. Nevertheless, Klaver’s party, which is as firmly pro-European as Rutte and likely the next Rutte-led government, could offer in opposition an alternative anti-austerity voice than the populist Geert Wilders.

Klaver’s party is locked in a tight contest among potentially five different parties for third place, behind Rutte’s center-right liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) and Wilders’s the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and eurosceptic Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom).

Wilders has dominated news coverage of the campaign both in The Netherlands and abroad, with his party surging to a formidable polling lead two years ago. Wilders, who pledges to ‘Make The Netherlands Great Again,’ promises a Trump-style rupture to halt the flow of refugees into The Netherlands and the flow of sovereignty from Amsterdam to Brussels. Wilders, like Trump and other far-right nationalists across Europe, is giving voice to a growing cadre of displaced and dispirited working-class voters who might have voted for left-wing parties a decade or two ago.

Though many polls forecast that the PVV will win the largest number of seats in the 150-member Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives), recent surveys show that the VVD’s support is plateauing or even, within the last week, falling. Even if Wilders and the populists do win the largest bloc of seats in the House, none of the other major Dutch parties are willing to entertain joining a Wilders-led coalition.

All of which means that the threat of an illiberal and xenophobic Dutch government, in 2017 at least, are far-fetched.

Indeed, if the election were held today, it would be Klaver’s GroenLinks (and not Wilders’s PVV) that could make the largest net gains in the election, contrary to conventional wisdom. Continue reading Meet Jesse Klaver, the 30-year-old Dutch leader of the surging Green-Left Party →

The Netherlands

Who is Alexander Pechtold?

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Though Geert Wilders and his anti-Moroccan comments dominated  headlines following last month’s municipal elections throughout The Netherlands, the clear winner was the Democraten 66 (D66, Democrats 66) and its leader Alexander Pechtold (pictured above).Netherlands Flag Icon

Nearly a year and a half after the last Dutch general election, D66 is emerging in polls as the strongest party in The Netherlands today, in light of the government’s increasing unpopularity under the strain of budget cuts and a continued sluggish economy.

Notably, D66 became the largest party in both Amsterdam and Utrecht. That’s a big deal because Amsterdam since 1946 has been the stronghold of the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party), the junior partner in the current Dutch government. It’s a sign of just how unpopular the government has become, and how specifically unpopular the Labour Party has become.

Nationally, the Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal) won the highest share of the vote with 17.7%, largely on the strength of rural voters.

The center-right, liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), the leading partner of the national government placed second with 12.7%, a significant decrease.

But D66 placed third with 9.6% of the vote and, in light of the advances in Amsterdam and Utrecht, emerged from the March 19 elections as the party with the most momentum in Dutch politics today.

It’s somewhat of an odd party.

Founded in (you guessed it!) 1966 by journalist Hans van Mierlo, its original goal was to make The Netherlands a more democratic country, with a two-party presidential republic and greater direct participation through referenda. 

Today, it doesn’t necessarily want to enact a presidential republic, but it’s still split between an older radical wing and a newer liberal wing, and it has essentially become a just-left-of-center party that’s both socially liberal and economically liberal, with chiefly urban appeal limited to The Netherlands’s large cities and progressive university towns. 

An art historian by training, Pechtold was the mayor of Wageningen before making the leap into national politics. He briefly served in the second government of Jan Pieter Balkenende between 2005 and 2006 as minister for government reform and kingdom relations. Continue reading Who is Alexander Pechtold? →

The Netherlands

VVD and Labour to form new ‘purple’ coalition for Dutch government

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With lightning speed (as far as coalition-building goes in the Netherlands), the two top finishers in the Sept. 12 Dutch election have formed a government that will seek €16 billion in budget cuts to bring the Dutch budget further into balance. 

Standing in front of a futuristic poster of a bridge, prime minister Mark Rutte (pictured above, right), the leader of the center-right Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) and Diederik Samsom (pictured above, left), leader of the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party) announced that they will form the next governing coalition together.

The two parties finished first and second, respectively, in September’s election, far outpacing the other Dutch parties.

Throughout much of the campaign, the more leftist Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) led polls, only for Labour to emerge in the last two weeks of the campaign, as Socialist leader Emile Roemer seemed to stumble in various television debates and Samsom emerged as a credible alternative — more pro-Europe and less stridently leftist yet still more skeptical of budget cuts.

Ultimately, the VVD won 41 seats and Labour won 38 seats — an increase for both parties.  The Socialists won just 15 seats, a far cry from polls just two weeks prior to the election that showed them winning upwards of 3o or 35 seats.  In switching from the Socialists to Labour, a huge chunk of Dutch voters have essentially moved the country from an outright anti-austerity coalition to a more stable, more centrist coalition — in fact, a return to the tradition of ‘purple cabinets’ of the past that included the VVD and Labour, most recently from 1994 to 2002 under various governments led by Labour prime minister Wim Kok.

The reported terms of the coalition agreement make clear that, essentially, the Rutte II government will continue to pursue vigorous austerity measures designed to bring the Dutch budget within 3% of GDP, despite Samsom’s opposition to budget cuts earlier in the spring and his vigorous opposition to Rutte throughout the campaign.  So in joining a government with Rutte, Samsom and Labour will leave the Socialists as the major anti-austerity opposition on the Dutch left.

So how exactly will the Rutte II government differ from its predecessor? And what did Labour win in exchange for its support for a fairly pro-austerity agenda?

Continue reading VVD and Labour to form new ‘purple’ coalition for Dutch government →

The Netherlands

Rutte’s VVD edges out Samsom’s Labour as both gain in Dutch election

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Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte looked more likely than not to continue as prime minister of the Netherlands Tuesday night after his party, the free-market liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) won the largest share of the vote in the Dutch election, with 98% of the votes counted.

The VVD won 26.6% of the vote, entitling it to 41 seats in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, an increase of 10 seats over the 2010 election.

It was followed very closely by the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party), with 24.8%, which entitles it to 39 seats, a nine-seat increase from 2010 under the incredibly strong performance of Labour leader Diederik Samsom, a former Greenpeace activist who took over the party’s leadership only in March 2012 and spent much of the past year trailing the more staunchly leftist Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) of Emile Roemer.

All things being equal, Rutte and Samsom are the clear winners of the election.  Rutte will now be able to attempt to form a government with a credible mandate for bringing the Dutch budget within 3% of Dutch GDP — his prior government fell in April of this year when Geert Wilders, the leader of the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom), refused to support further budget cuts.

Samsom is nearly as much a winner as Rutte, though.  His polished performance in the various Dutch leaders debates (in contrast to Roemer’s often bumbling performances)  convinced Dutch voters that he possesses sufficient poise to be prime minister.  Samsom, a more leftist leader of the Labour Party as compared to his predecessor, former Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen, offered essentially the same anti-austerity option as Roemer, but without the anti-Europe sentiment of a Roemer-led government.  Even if he remains in the opposition, he can become the chief voice against Rutte’s budget cuts during the next government and work to build upon his party’s gains from today’s election.

The Socialists finished far behind with 9.7% and 15 seats — unchanged from 2010, but a huge disappointment after polls showed a gain of potentially 35 seats just a few weeks ago.

The Socialists, in fact, finished just behind Wilders’s anti-immigration, anti-Europe PVV — with 10.1% and also just 15 seats, it’s a nine-seat drop from the 2010 election, a huge disappointment for Wilders and a success for those who favor an approach of integrating Muslims into Dutch culture rather than excluding them.  Essentially, voters seemed to blame Wilders for dragging them back to the polls just two years after the last election — and furthermore, the essentially pro-European Dutch did not seem to take to Wilders’s contrived and virulent campaign to bring the Dutch guilder back and pull the Netherlands out of the eurozone.  Wilders never found the same resonance over Europe in 2012 that he obvious found over Muslim immigration in 2010.

Rutte’s coalition partners, the once-dominant but now-atrophied Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal) won just 8.5% and 13 seats, a drop of eight seats from 2010.  The progressive / centrist Democraten 66 (Democrats 66) won 7.9% and 12 seats.

Also returning to the Tweede Kamer were the center-left, Christian Democratic ChristenUnie (CU, Christian Union) with 3.1% and five seats, the ecologist GroenLinks (GL, GreenLeft) with 2.3% and three seats, the Calvinist, ‘testimonial’ Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP, the Reformed Political Party) with 2.1% and three seats, and finally, both of the newly-formed Labour spinoff 50PLUS and the animal welfare advocate Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD, Party for the Animals), each with 1.9% and two seats.

As soon as tomorrow, cabinet formation talks are expected to begin — and for the first time, the Dutch parliament will take the lead in exploring potential coalitions (instead of the Dutch monarch, Queen Beatrix).  Those talks typically take up to three months, but can take longer — the 2010 government was formed after four months of negotiations.

Given the result, it looks like three coalitions are possible: Continue reading Rutte’s VVD edges out Samsom’s Labour as both gain in Dutch election →

The Netherlands

On the eve of Dutch elections, a primer (and a prediction) on cabinet formation

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In most countries, an election is the decisive moment in forming a government.  After the election results are in, it’s usually immediately clear who will become the next president or prime minister or chancellor (or so on).  Even in countries with complex parliamentary systems, where coalitions still take time to negotiate, it’s typically pretty clear to spot which party will emerge to form the government.

In the Netherlands, however, the election is more prologue than main event: no single party has won a majority of seats in the Dutch parliament since 1900, so the main government-forming exercise is the complex negotiation that follows Dutch elections.  While not as tortured as recent Belgian political negotiations, Dutch cabinet negotiations typically take around three months to complete — and that’s only when the coalition formation process is fairly routine.

The last government, a minority coalition headed by Mark Rutte, was sworn in only in October 2010, following elections earlier in June.

This year, two thing augur a relatively longer (than shorter) period of cabinet negotiations:

  • First, poll volatility and the likelihood that a large number of parties are expected to win double-digit numbers of seats in the 150-member Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, will make the arithmetic of forming a majority government even more difficult.
  • Second, MPs eliminated the role of the monarch from the cabinet formation process in 2010, which will now be headed by the chair of the Tweede Kamer, Gerdi Verbeet, instead of Queen Beatrix (pictured above), leaving the process more uncertain and less transparent than in years past.

In years past, the Dutch monarch (since 1980, Queen Beatrix) has typically initiated the process by meeting with each of the party leaders and appointing an informateur, typically a senior statesman, to explore the possibility of various governing coalitions.  Coalition negotiations can go through several stages of informateurs — for example, in 2010, the Queen ultimately appointed five different informateurs, including three who served in the role twice.  Thereupon, the monarch appoints the formateur — typically the leader of the largest party in parliament — to negotiate the details of the coalition agreement among the coalition partners, including the governing agenda for the coalition, appointments to the cabinet and other issues.

This year, the process is a bit more unsettled — it will be Verbeet and parliamentarians who can shape the agenda of the negotiations, which could result in delays as everyone navigates a new process, and which some critics believe could make the cabinet formation process less transparent.  Although Queen Beatrix was widely seen as steering the 2010 negotiations away from any PVV participation in government (and that bias was one of the reasons MPs voted to strip the monarchy of its role in cabinet formation), it is not necessarily the case that parliamentarians will have any less bias in choosing informateurs.

The final TNS Nipo poll forecasts the following results for tomorrow’s election (similar to results from other polls):

  • 35 seats for Rutte’s free-market liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy).
  • 34 seats for the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party), which has seen its support rise with the success of its leader Diederik Samsom in the recent debates.
  • 21 seats for the anti-austerity, leftist Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party), a marked decline from a month ago, when it led polls, before its leader Emile Roemer made some anti-European comments and was seen as having stumbled in the debates.
  • 17 seats for the populist, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom) of Geert Wilders, a sharp decline in seats.
  • 13 seats for the progressive/centrist Democraten 66 (Democrats 66).
  • 12 seats for the conservative Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal), a sharp decline.
  • 6 seats for ChristenUnie (CU, Christian Union), a smaller, vaguely center-left, Christian democratic party.
  • 4 seats for GroenLinks (GL, GreenLeft), the Dutch green party.
  • 4 seats for 50PLUS, a new party founded in 2009 by former Labour politicians.
  • 2 seats for Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP, the Reformed Political Party), a Calvinist party that’s in electoral alliance with ChristenUnie, but is typically a ‘testimonial’ party uninterested in joining coalitions.
  • 2 seats for the Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD, Party for the Animals), another ‘testimonial’ party focused on animal rights and welfare.

If those polls are correct — and, I’ll caution, polls still show many undecided voters — I see three potential coalitions:

  • a centrist, pro-Europe ‘purple’ coalition, largely between the VVD and Labour,
  • a more leftist anti-austerity coalition, largely between Labour and the Socialists, and
  • an unlikelier VVD-led pro-austerity coalition without Labour.

It seems more likely than not, however, that Labour is headed back into government as either the leading party or a supporting coalition member of the next government. Continue reading On the eve of Dutch elections, a primer (and a prediction) on cabinet formation →

The Netherlands

Samsomania! Five reasons why everything’s coming up roses for the Dutch Labour Party

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In less than two weeks, we’ve watched the Dutch election transformed from a two-party race into a three-way tie, as the Dutch Labour Party leader Diederik Samsom has burst into a starring role on the Dutch political stage.

Samsom’s party, the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, the Labour Party), now either leads or is essentially tied with the two prior leading parties in advance of the September 12 elections for the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament.

Those two parties are the center-right, free-market liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), led by current prime minister Mark Rutte, and the stridently leftist, anti-austerity Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) led by Emile Roemer.

In the latest Ipsos Nederland poll and projection, Rutte’s VVD would win 34 seats, Roemer’s Socialists would win 27 seats and Samsom’s Labour would win 26 seats.  Three other smaller parties win a significant share of the vote: the anti-Muslim (and now increasingly anti-Europe) Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom), led by Geert Wilders, would win just 20 seats, the progressive Democraten 66 (Democrats 66) would win 14 seats, and the center-right Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal) would win just 13 seats.  TNS Nipo and Maurice du Fond polls show an even more ascendant Labour result.

Rutte’s VVD emerged with the most seats in the prior 2010 election, and he formed a minority government with the CDA, with outside support coming from Wilder’s PVV.  The current government fell in April, when Wilders refused to support Rutte’s budget package, which aimed to cut the 2013 Dutch budget to within 3% of GDP.

Labour, then headed by former Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen, finished with one fewer seat than the VVD in 2010, and is currently the main opposition party in the Tweede Kamer, but it had consistently lost support ever since — until now.  Cohen stepped down earlier this year, and Samsom, a more leftist Labour leader, replaced him in March.

So the latest poll capture the recent resounding resurgence for Labour, but also indicates that the Socialists and the Democrats 66 would still improve on their 2010 election totals, indicating that the Dutch parliament would be a much more anti-austerity parliament — a Labour-Socialist coalition is a possibility, as is a so-called ‘purple coalition’ between Labour and the VVD.  Labour last governed the Netherlands from 1994 to 2002 under prime minister Wim Kok, when the VVD and Labour joined together under a so-called ‘purple coalition’ (alongside the Dutch Greens and the Democrats 66), and Labour and the CDA governed in coalitions in the 1980s.

Whew! But that doesn’t explain why Samsom has so drastically improved his party’s chances to the point where he is now a credible contender, with Rutte and Roemer, to become The Netherlands’s next prime minister.  Here are five reasons why:  Continue reading Samsomania! Five reasons why everything’s coming up roses for the Dutch Labour Party →

The Netherlands

Who is Diederik Samsom? A look at the newest party leader in the Netherlands

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When Dutch voters tune into tonight’s debate — the second in advance of the September 12 parliamentary election — they will be watching closely the man who was deemed to be the winner of last week’s debate.

That’s Diederik Samsom, the leader of the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, the Labour Party), is riding a wave of popularity, with Labour rising very narrowly in the polls and with indications that Dutch voters may be giving Samsom his first real look as they contemplate doubts about Emile Roemer, the popular leader of the Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party).

A former Greenpeace activist who once studied nuclear energy and physics, Samsom has been a Labour member of the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, since 2003, and has served as the party’s spokesperson for environmental issues.  Hailing from the left branch of the Labour Party, Samsom opposed extending the Dutch military presence in Iraq in 2004 in defiance of much of his own party.

The Labour Party currently holds the second-largest number of seats in the Tweede Kamer — 30 seats to 31 for the party of prime minister Mark Rutte, the the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy).

Many Dutch voters appear ready to reject Rutte’s brand of austerity, which would normally leave Labour well-placed for the elections.  Instead, Labour has watched as Roemer and the Socialists bounded to the top of the polls, tied or even leading Rutte’s VVD. Continue reading Who is Diederik Samsom? A look at the newest party leader in the Netherlands →

The Netherlands

Rutte and Roemer hope to consolidate support in Dutch election, as Europe watches nervously

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As Dutch voters and the wider international world begin to pay attention to the Sept. 12 election, it’s becoming clear that ‘anti-austerity’ and ‘pro-austerity’ forces are coalescing behind the party of prime minister Mark Rutte (pictured above, top) and the Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) of Emile Roemer (pictured above, below), leaving both newer and traditional parties of the Dutch political landscape floundering. 

The election, which is typically followed by months-long coalitions talks, will have a significant impact on the ongoing political and economic eurozone crisis: a Rutte victory would bolster German chancellor Angela Merkel in her cause for Europe-wide austerity, while a Roemer victory would embolden a growing ‘pro-growth’ cause that includes French president François Hollande and, to some degree, Italian premier Mario Monti.

After a relatively quiet election season, Rutte, leader of the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), is back in the spotlight with a promise to increase an existing tax break for workers (arbeidskorting) by €300 in 2013 and by €1,000 in 2014.  The move is designed to sweeten the otherwise harsh effect of budget cuts that would lower the 2013 budget deficit to within 3% of GDP — last year’s budget was 4.7% of Dutch GDP, a shortfall that undermined Dutch credibility on the European stage.  Since Rutte came to power in a minority coalition government in 2010, he has made broad cuts across the entire spectrum of government spending, and the Dutch retirement age is set to rise from 65 to 67.

Rutte’s attempt to pass more budget cuts in the Netherlands in April led to the fall of his government, when Geert Wilders, the leader of the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom) refused to support further cuts — although the PVV had not been a formal member of the coalition, it had provided crucial outside support to Rutte’s government.

Wilders, who rose to prominence and much electoral success in 2010 on his anti-Muslim, anti-immigration platform, is campaigning in 2012 on a full withdrawal from the euro and from the European Union altogether (even though the Netherlands was one of the original six members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951).  For whatever reason, however, voters are turning away from Wilders — much to Roemer’s benefit.

The subtext to Rutte’s drive to cut the Dutch budget is simple — he wants to retain the country’s pristine ‘AAA’ rating and keep the country out of any sovereign debt crisis and the ballooning yields that follow.  Above all, Rutte is determined to keep the Netherlands within the terms set by the Maastricht Treaty that establishes the 3% target.  The Netherlands is just one of four eurozone countries that has maintained its ‘AAA’ rating from each of the three major credit ratings agencies (joining Germany, Luxembourg and Finland).  Continue reading Rutte and Roemer hope to consolidate support in Dutch election, as Europe watches nervously →

The Netherlands

The incredibly shrinking Geert Wilders

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The past decade in Dutch politics has been fraught with what in the United States would be called “culture war” issues.

It may be surprising when you think of the Netherlands and its liberal attitude towards many of the hot-button issues in the U.S. — marijuana legalization, euthanasia, prostitution, same-sex marriage — but the Netherlands has had more than its share of tensions over Muslim immigration in the past decade.

The current standard-bearer of anti-Islam politics is Geert Wilders, somewhat of a Dutch Cultural Warrior, version 2.0 (following in the tradition of the late Pim Fortuyn, filmmaker Theo van Gogh and, to some degree, former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali).  Wilders, the platinum blonde enfante terrible of Dutch politics, has highlighted the influx of Muslim immigrants to the Netherlands as a threat to the culture and way of life of the Netherlands (and Europe, generally).

His Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom) swept the last general election in 2010, winning nearly one-sixth of the seats in the Tweede Kamer, the third-highest total.

Wilders dominated that election campaign with his views — he would ban all Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, pay current immigrants to leave and ban the Koran. He then dominated the months of coalitions talks that resulted when no party won enough seats to govern.  And then, as an outside supporter of Mark Rutte’s government, he has dominated Dutch governance — right up to April 2012, when he withdrew his support for additional budget cuts, leading to the snap elections on September 12.

So it’s with some surprise to see that the PVV is not dominating this election campaign: polls show that Rutte’s liberal, free-market Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) is tied with Emile Roemer’s Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party).  Rutte is running a campaign defending his push to bring the Dutch budget within 3% of Dutch annual GDP, while Roemer (and not Wilders) has emerged as the voice of opposition to austerity.

What’s clear is that, for the first time in over a decade, next month’s Dutch election is about spending, growth and the economy and less about Muslim immigration and ‘culture war’ issues — and early polls indicate that Wilders has not been as germane to the 2012 debate as he was in 2010.

Maybe it’s because Wilders has been so thoroughly identified as an anti-Muslim candidate (rather than an anti-Europe or anti-austerity).  Maybe it’s because there’s no mistaking the message of anti-austerity that voting for the Socialists sends.  Maybe it’s because Wilders originally provided support to prop up Rutte’s minority government.

But for whatever reason, Wilders has watched Roemer’s party rush to the front of the pack.  Although Wilders would normally seem mostly likely to benefit from a strong protest vote this year, he’s been relegated to watch as the unlikely Roemer drinks his milkshake — Wilders and the PVV remain trapped in a four-way tie for third place alongside the progressive Democraten 66 (Democrats 66) bloc, and the two struggling parties that dominated postwar Dutch politics until the last decade, the center-right Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal) and the center-left Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party).  It’s a little odd, considering that Wilders has a populist style that dwarfs that of either the technocratic Rutte or the plodding Roemer.

That doesn’t mean Wilders is going down gently, and Dutch voters are just starting to tune into what’s been a subdued campaign that coincides with summer holiday season.

His latest bid has been to expand his brand of populism to Europe — the PVV’s platform for 2012 reads, “Their Brussels, Our Netherlands.”  In typical Wilders fashion, it’s not nuanced — it proclaims, “other parties may choose Islam or EU nationalism, our party is for the Netherlands!”  Continue reading The incredibly shrinking Geert Wilders →

The Netherlands

Who is Emile Roemer?

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Europeans, including the Dutch, may well be unplugged and disengaged this month.

But ready or not, September 12 is nearly a month away, which means yet another European election — this time in the Netherlands, one of the six founding members of the European Economic Community in 1957, that body would develop into today’s European Union.  Dutch voters will elect 150 members to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the parliament of the Netherlands.

And today, after years of elections on social issues, the Dutch parliamentary election is poised to be fought, won and lost on one issue: budget austerity and bringing Dutch fiscal policy in line with the European ideal.

Given what we’ve seen this year all across Europe — the success of Alexis Tsipras’s anti-austerity SYRIZA coalition in Greece, the emergence of the anti-austerity Victor Ponta in Romania and the surge of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Front de gauche in the first round of the French presidential election — it’s no surprise that the breakaway pace-setter in the Dutch election has been not any anti-Muslim group, but the Dutch Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party), led by Emile Roemer.

As I noted last week, the prior 2010 election saw unprecedented levels of fragmentation among the Dutch electorate, and it led to six months of talks before a governing coalition emerged — Mark Rutte and his free-market, liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) ultimately formed a weak minority government in coalition with the once-strong, now-withering center-right Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal), with outside support on a vote-by-vote basis from Geert Wilders’s right-wing populist and anti-Muslim Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom).  Rutte’s government fell in April when Wilders denied his support for a budget that would have reduced the Dutch budget deficit to just 3% of GDP next year.

In the current campaign, Wilders has attempted to deploy anti-Europe sentiment with as much gusto as he previously deployed anti-Muslim sentiment in 2010 (including wild rhetoric that would pull the Netherlands out of the eurozone).  But according to the latest IPSOS poll, both Wilders’s PVV and the CDA are sinking.  Even though Rutte’s VVD is holding steady as the top vote-winner, Roemer’s Socialists have vaunted into second-place — and are gaining.  Currently, the Socialists are projected to take 29 seats to 35 seats for Rutte’s VVD.  Other polls, moreover, give the Socialists a lead or put them in a tie with the VVD.

What does that mean? Even if the Socialists cannot form a coalition with, say, the longtime center-left Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party), which is currently polling in third place (projected to win 23 seats), the Socialists will nonetheless be a force to be reckoned with as never before.

And that means Emile Roemer will become a key power broker in Dutch — and European — politics.

So who is Roemer — and what can we expect from him?

Roemer remains a bit of a blank slate within the international media — for now, at least.

Continue reading Who is Emile Roemer? →

The Netherlands

Up next in the spotlight during the EU’s summer of discontent: the Netherlands

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It may seem hard to believe, especially as yet another bond crisis envelops Europe, but the Netherlands has less than two months to go before a new general election on September 12.

As with so many elections in Europe lately, this one will be fought and won primarily on the issue of austerity.

The early election was called at the end of April following the resignation of Mark Rutte (pictured above, right) over disagreements on the Dutch budget.  Rutte, whose fragile minority government was being supported by Geert Wilders’s Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, the Party for Freedom), had been in talks with Wilder and other government partners for weeks in an attempt to cut €16 billion from the Dutch budget, lowering the 2013 budget deficit from 4.7% of GDP to just 3% of GDP.

Wilders (pictured above, left), whose PVV vaunted to the heart of Dutch politics following the particularly fractured 2010 general election, refused to accept the cuts.

In no small part due to the populist, anti-Muslim Wilders, previous Dutch elections have focused on identity politics: protecting the particularly liberal social rights in the Netherlands (as to same-sex marriage, drug legalization and euthanasia, among others), immigration and the role of Muslims in Dutch society.

This campaign, however, is focused squarely on austerity, and while polls today show that voters are inclined to reward Rutte and his free-market, liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), voters are also inclined to give Emile Roemer’s Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party) its best showing in Dutch political history — with projections of 30 to 32 seats.  This would only further fragment the Dutch Tweede Kamer, the 150-seat lower house parliament of the Netherlands.

After the 2010 elections, it took Rutte six months of long discussions to put together a minority government.  As it turned out, Rutte entered into a formal coalition with the center-right Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal), with outside support coming from Wilders’s populist, right-wing and anti-immigrant PVV.  The latest Ipsos Netherlands poll shows that both the CDA and the PVV will lose seats in September, which could complicate Rutte’s ability to form any government and which could also prevent the adoption of the 2013 budget.

Here’s the latest composition of the lower house of the Dutch parliament:

Continue reading Up next in the spotlight during the EU’s summer of discontent: the Netherlands →