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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 →