Summary of the day
Dutch party leaders clashed in a tetchy televised debate on Monday night as the Netherlands election campaign entered its final days. The six main party leaders interrupted each other and failed to agree on any subjects except the housing crisis.
The last pre-election poll, published today, showed the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) on course to win 28 seats. The People’s party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and Green-Labour alliance (GL/PvdA) were on course for 27 seats each. Due to the margin of error, the three parties are considered at the moment to be tied.
The VVD head, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, ruled out joining a government with the far-right PVV if the PVV gets the most votes. She said she was prepared to talk to the PVV leader, Geert Wilders, about coalition-forming if VVD was the largest party.
The far-right Forum for Democracy leader, Thierry Baudet, said he was continuing with his campaign, after he was hit with a beer bottle.
Rem Korteweg, a senior research fellow at the Clingendael Institute, said today that the “only surprise” in the Dutch campaign was the rise of the far-right candidate Wilders over the past days and that when it comes to a new coalition, the big question remained whether Wilders is excluded or not.
Sarah de Lange, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam, underscored that even in the final pre-election opinion poll, 63% of respondents were not completely decided.
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The Dutch government’s failure to develop a workable political solution to the problem of excess nitrogen has shaken the country’s politics to its foundations.
In the Netherlands it is known simply as the stikstofcrisis, the nitrogen crisis. An environmental reform that at first glance seemed to affect only a small proportion of Dutch society has somehow become not only wildly controversial in its own right, but embroiled in a web of related and unrelated issues, grievances and conspiracy theories.
Check out Paul Tullis’ long read on the nitrogen wars: the Dutch farmers’ revolt that turned a nation upside down.
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