The far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders has admitted that he was not off to a “dream start” in his attempts to form a government, after a man he appointed to oversee coalition talks quit over fraud allegations before getting started in the role.
Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) look to have won almost a quarter of seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament in last Wednesday’s elections, about 10 seats more than predicted.
As leader of the biggest party and as is customary in Dutch politics, Wilders had last week engaged the PVV senator Gom van Strien to act as his choice of “scout” – a person tasked with shuttling between party leaders to clinch a deal.
However, allegations emerged in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper over the weekend that Van Strien was one of several people accused by Utrecht Holdings of “irregular” handling of commercial spin-offs from Utrecht University and University Medical Center Utrecht. While Van Strien has rejected any questions over his integrity and denied any allegation of fraud, he withdrew from the political process on Monday morning.
“This weekend, articles appeared in the media about work in my past, questioning my integrity,” he said in a statement published by the Dutch parliament. “In my view, the disturbance around this and my preparation of a response to it do not relate to my current work as a scout. This is why I have informed Geert Wilders and the chairman of parliament that I will resign my duties as scout with immediate effect.”
Dutch coalition processes typically take months and it is not unusual for them to be interrupted by party politics. Wilders has said he will look for a new scout “with more distance from politics” to attend the first meetings, which will be with him, the GreenLeft/Labour leader, Frans Timmermans, the VVD leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, and the head of the liberal democratic D66, Rob Jetten.
Wilders, who has said on X that he is determined to be “prime minister of this beautiful country”, admitted to Dutch media that the Van Strien debacle was “not my dream start” and criticised him for not having informed him of the legal situation. “Otherwise, you know that it will just go on and you have to spend the whole week denying or debunking it,” Wilders said.
Although a prospective government could be made from the PVV, the rightwing VVD (current prime minister Mark Rutte’s party), the New Social Contract party led by Pieter Omtzigt, and the Dutch Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB), led by Caroline van der Plas, only the BBB has given a strong nod.
Having previously excluded Wilders, Omtzigt has said the result must be respected and his party would “take responsibility”. Yeşilgöz-Zegerius has already told media that she would not serve in a government under Wilders but would be willing to work in a confidence and supply arrangement.
Raoul du Pré, the chief political editor of the Volkskrant, said such early statements were part of the typical chess game of formation in this proportionally representative and splintered political landscape. “The party that loses always says: ‘We are going to sit out a turn,’” he said.
Only if Wilders fails to make a coalition could another party such as Timmermans’ GreenLeft/Labour be invited to try. Although the largest party typically provides the prime minister, this is only a convention.
Meanwhile, economists from the ING pointed out that, based on the manifestos of the four rightwing parties – despite that fact that they all want strict limits on immigration – they would create a “considerably expansionary” economy that would “result in more demand for foreign workers”.
