Summary of the day
Finland said it would close its border with Russia for a period of two weeks, after accusing Moscow of orchestrating the arrival of people from third countries at the border. The Finnish prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said “we don’t accept any attempts to undermine our national security”.
Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, has said he wants a deal on Gibraltar to be signed tomorrow, and that he will hold talks with his British counterpart on the subject.
The deal is expected to include plans to turn the Campo de Gibraltar – the Spanish area around Gibraltar – into a “zone of shared prosperity” that would mean the elimination of the border fence so as to allow the movement of people and goods between the territory and the EU.
Krišjānis Kariņš, Latvia’s foreign minister and a former prime minister who is vying for the role of Nato secretary-general, said the next alliance chief needs to be “a proven consensus-builder”.
The foreign ministers of the Baltic states have decided not to attend the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) ministerial council in Skopje over concerns about Russian participation.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, called for a “tough and united” response to migrant smuggling.
Geert Wilders, the Dutch far right leader, insisted that his Party for Freedom is “a broad party” and “there for everyone”.
Ronald Plasterk, a former Dutch minister representing the Labour (PvdA) party, has been appointed the new ‘scout’ for post-election talks in the Netherlands.
Tom van der Meer, a professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam, said today that when it comes to the Dutch election results, there is no international domino effect.
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Geert Wilders, the Dutch populist whose Party for Freedom (PVV) won the most seats in last week’s election, will have to sacrifice almost all his far-right manifesto to enter government, analysts say – and even that may not be enough for him to form a new coalition.
As Wilders on Tuesday appointed a second “scout” to scope out possible alliances (the first stepped down on Monday over fraud allegations), he again insisted on social media that the PVV was “a broad party” and “there for everyone”.
But it will take more than words to persuade potential coalition partners. What will count is how much of his platform he is willing to scrap – and what other parties will demand to govern alongside a veteran far-right polemicist and provocateur.
In the multi-party Netherlands, governed by coalitions for well over a century, the election is “really just the end of the beginning”, said Rem Korteweg, a senior fellow at the Clingendael Institute thinktank.
“It’s as if the cards have been dealt, and now the players have to play,” Korteweg said. “Each party has its red lines, its bargaining chips. There’s always endless horsetrading; this time there’ll be even more. Manifestos become almost irrelevant. The coalition deal is what matters.”
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