Forming a new government in the Netherlands when the election was won by a far-right firebrand wanting to ban the Qur’an, reject all new asylum claims, exit the EU and rip up reams of environmental regulations was never going to be easy.
It became a lot harder on Tuesday, however, after a key potential member walked away from coalition talks, meaning Geert Wilders has almost no chance of forming a majority administration – although a minority cabinet remains a possibility.
Wilders’s anti-Islam Freedom party (PVV) won a shock 26% of the vote in November’s elections, making it the largest in the Dutch parliament. But its 37 seats left it far short of a majority in the 150-seat assembly, and needing to negotiate.
The leader’s preferred option was a four-way alliance with the liberal-conservative VVD of the outgoing prime minister, Mark Rutte; the BBB agrarian protest party; and New Social Contract (NSC), a centrist startup led by the former Christian Democrat Pieter Omtzigt.
However, Omtzigt on Tuesday abruptly declared the first round of coalition talks over, saying he was “shocked” by reports on the state of Dutch public finances and would not be part of a government that made spending promises it knew it could not keep.
Economic experts have said the new government will need to find €17bn (£14.5bn) in structural spending cuts, a growing bone of contention between NSC and VVD, seen as fiscal hawks, and PVV and BBB, which want to increase public spending.
In truth, as Omtzigt later admitted on TV, spending was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The NSC leader campaigned on “good governance” and “doing politics differently” and has long had doubts about going into government with Wilders.
Besides Wilders’s unconstitutional anti-Islam proposals, the far-right provocateur’s pledges included ending the free movement of EU workers, increasing drilling for oil and gas, putting 14-year-olds before adult criminal courts, and halting military aid to Ukraine.
Ronald Plasterk, the former home affairs minister who is chairing the talks, met the three remaining potential coalition partners on Wednesday night without Omtzigt, and will present a progress report to parliament by Monday.
Analysts said several scenarios were now possible, some more likely than others. “Omtzigt made clear this round of talks was over but also that the process had not collapsed,” said Prof Sarah de Lange, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam.
“He is willing to talk again, on some form of alternative construction. The three remaining partners may now continue with negotiations on a minority government – supported, maybe on a formal or informal confidence and supply basis, by NSC.”
Indications were that PVV, BBB and VVD – all of which expressed disappointment and surprise at Omtzigt’s decision – were “clearly getting on very well”, de Lange said. “And right now, you’d have to say that none of the other options look very promising.”
However, Rem Korteweg, a senior fellow at the Clingendael Institute thinktank, said that for a minority government to be sustainable, the VVD might have to be prepared to formally enter into a Wilders-led coalition rather than lend it parliamentary support.
The party’s new leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, said after the vote that it would not go into government with Wilders, but she is coming under pressure from voters to change her mind. “It’s hard to see how it would work for Wilders otherwise,” Korteweg said.
A second option, favoured by Omtzigt but rejected by Wilders, might be a “business cabinet”, with “experts” – not necessarily from the world of politics – heading a technocratic-style government with broad parliamentary support.
An alternative coalition of VVD, NSC and the Labour/Green Left alliance headed by the former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans that finished second in the elections looked “very unlikely at this early stage”, Korteweg said.
Most political leaders, including Timmermans, have acknowledged that rightwing parties won the election, that Dutch voters clearly want to see a rightwing government formed, and that efforts to do so are far from exhausted.
Fresh elections, another theoretical possibility, also looked unlikely, Korteweg noted, if only because “they stand to benefit no one but Wilders” – whose PVV is projected by most recent polls to win up to 50 seats if the vote were to be held today.
Both analysts stressed that these were early days and previous governments had been successfully assembled long after one of the original intended coalition partners had pulled out. The last Dutch coalition took a record 299 days to form.
But even if the partners could reach agreement on policy, de Lange noted, the toughest hurdle may come at the end – on who gets what job.
“There are obviously many, many reasons why Wilders would be a difficult choice as prime minister,” she said. “Beyond that, both PVV and BBB are going to find it very hard to come up with qualified people for ministerial roles. The most difficult part of this government formation may prove to be not the programme but the personnel.”
