Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Dutch Election 2017

Parliamentary elections were held in the Netherlands on March 15. Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberal VVD placed first with 33 out of 150 seats. The social democratic Labor Party suffered an historic defeat, going down from 38 to nine seats.

  • Dutch Greens Fail to Tempt Labor into Rejecting Rutte’s Liberals

    Dutch Labor Party leader Lodewijk Asscher refused to shake hands with his Green party counterpart, Jesse Klaver, on Friday and agree not to go into government again with the right.

    In an election debate broadcast on Dutch public radio, Klaver asked Asscher to commit to a progressive alliance and not join another coalition with the center-right liberal party.

    Asscher refused to make that promise, calling Klaver’s suggestion “a little arrogant”.

    Polls do not suggest the left will win a majority next month. Incumbent prime minister Mark Rutte’s liberals will almost certainly be needed to form the next government. (more…)

  • Dutch Feel Labor Market Liberalization Has Gone Too Far

    Amsterdam Netherlands
    Night falls on the Damrak in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Unsplash/Elias Ehmann)

    The Dutch election campaign is overshadowed by the rise of nationalist party leader Geert Wilders and his controversial views on the European Union and Islam.

    But don’t overlook what could be one of the stickiest point in coalition talks after the election in March: the liberalization of the labor market.

    Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberals, on the right, and the liberal Democrats, in the center, are both likely to be part of the next government. Both want to free up the labor market, but polls suggest that many of their voters agree with the left that liberalization has already gone too far. (more…)

  • Dutch Freedom Party Leader Cancels Second Election Debate

    Are all populists thin-skinned?

    The Dutch Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, canceled his participation in an election debate organized by RTL in two weeks’ time after its news division published an interview with the politician’s older brother on Sunday.

    The Freedom Party leader called the interview “incredibly vile,” but his brother hasn’t exactly shied away from the media. He even contributed to a left-wing opinion website for a while.

    In the interview, Paul Wilders criticizes his brother’s take-no-prisoners mentality.

    He also laments that the two have barely spoken since Paul started speaking out against the Freedom Party’s nativist policies. (more…)

  • Don’t Worry About the Many Political Parties in the Netherlands

    The Hague Netherlands
    Dutch government offices and parliament buildings in The Hague (iStock/Fotolupa)

    More parties than ever could win seats in the Dutch parliament next month, but that hardly means the country is on the verge of becoming ungovernable.

    The Financial Times writes that the proliferation of political parties in the Netherlands — 28 will be on a ballot paper in March — makes the election hard to call and its aftermath potentially messy.

    But less than half those parties are projected to win seats and only one newcomer, 50Plus, is expected to win more than a handful.

    That could still be a record number and the Financial Times is right when it points out that support for the three largest parties — the Christian Democrats, Labor and Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberals — has fallen from almost 90 percent three decades ago to around 40 percent today.

    But that observation misses a few nuances. (more…)

  • Dutch Parties’ Plans Scored for Economic Impact

    The Dutch economy would grow faster if the manifesto of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberal party were implemented while pensioners and those on welfare would be better off under a left-wing government.

    Those are some of the findings of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, which calculated the effect th from the country’s eleven largest political parties would have on incomes, jobs and growth. (more…)

  • Rutte Wins If Dutch Vote with Their Pocketbooks

    Mark Rutte
    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte listens to a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, January 20, 2016 (European Parliament)

    Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberal party would benefit from switching the election debate in the Netherlands to the economy, on which it is trusted the most.

    Cultural and social issues, like immigration, pensions and security, currently play a major role.

    In the first party leaders debate on Wednesday — which Rutte and his Freedom Party rival, Geert Wilders, skipped — the national economy barely featured.

    Instead, politicians spent a third of their time debating what Donald Trump’s election in the United States means for Europe and the Netherlands. Left-wing leaders said he was a menace to transatlantic relations; right-wing leaders were either unperturbed or argued that Trump’s surprise victory cautions against complacency at home. (more…)

  • Nativist Freedom Party Draws Support from Dutch Periphery

    Maastricht Netherlands
    Evening falls in Maastricht, the Netherlands, January 5, 2009 (Bert Kaufmann)

    Support for the nationalist Freedom Party rises the farther away one travels from the commercial and political heartland of the Netherlands on the North Sea coast, a recent survey shows.

    The anti-EU and anti-immigrant party led by Geert Wilders receives around 20 percent support nationwide, but there are regional differences.

    I&O Research found that the party is most popular in the border regions of Groningen, Limburg and Zeeland.

    In Noord-Brabant, the country’s third largest province and home to technology hubs Eindhoven and Tilburg, Freedom Party support hovers around 15 percent.

    The party struggles to get more than 10 percent support in the rest of the country. It is least popular in the “Randstad” provinces of Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland and Utrecht, which is where the major cities are located. (more…)

  • Dutch Justice Minister Resigns in Blow to Rutte

    Dutch justice minister Ard van der Steur has stepped down, saying he no longer felt he enjoyed the confidence of parliament.

    Van der Steur is the second justice minister from Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberal party to resign during this parliament. His predecessor, Ivo Opstelten, was caught up in the same scandal that claimed Van der Steur’s ministership on Thursday.

    Opposition lawmakers accused Van der Steur of withholding information about the role he had played in Opstelten’s downfall.

    Opstelten resigned in 2015 when it emerged that his undersecretary had paid close to €2.1 million as a public prosecutor in the 1990s to a drug lord in return for testimony — twice the amount officials had previously disclosed.

    This year it came to light that Van der Steur, as a parliamentarian in 2015, had helped Opstelten draft his statements to the house and not disclosed this before taking his place. (more…)

  • New York Times Gets Rutte’s Aggressive Liberalism Wrong

    Mark Rutte
    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte answers questions from members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, July 5, 2016 (European Parliament)

    The New York Times reports that Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has taken a “Trump-like turn” in the face of a “hard-right challenge”, siding with the “silent majority” in its prejudices against immigrants.

    That gets it quite wrong. (more…)

  • Asscher Unites Dutch Left Against Further Labor Reforms

    Labor Party leader Lodewijk Asscher has united left-wing parties in the Netherlands against further liberalizations of the labor market.

    Asscher, who serves as social affairs minister in the outgoing coalition government of Mark Rutte, called for a pact to defend workers’ rights this weekend.

    The Greens and far-left Socialist Party were quick to embrace his proposals.

    They would introduce unemployment insurance for the self-employed and halt reforms that make it easier for businesses to dismiss workers on a full-time contract.

    Asscher has also taken issue with the free movement of labor in the European Union, arguing that this creates unfair competition for Dutch workers.

    Under EU law, a Dutch companies could hire a Bulgarian carpenter or a Polish truck driver and pay them at the (much lower) rate they would earn in their home country. (more…)

  • Dutch Election Guide

    Netherlands flag
    Flag of the Netherlands (Pixabay/Ben Kerckx)

    Parliamentary elections will be held in the Netherlands on March 15. Here is everything you need to know about them. (more…)

  • Rutte Rules Out Pact with Dutch Freedom Party

    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has ruled out forming a coalition government with the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders.

    Rutte, who leads the Netherlands’ ruling liberal party, said in an interview on Sunday that there was “zero chance” of him doing a deal with Wilders after the election in March. (more…)

  • Dutch Socialists Struggle to Claim Mantle of Left-Wing Purists

    The Dutch Socialist Party has ruled out joining a government led by the liberal prime minister, Mark Rutte, after the election in March, saying the differences between them are too great.

    On everything from labor policy to health care to taxes, the two could hardly be further apart.

    But that didn’t stop the Socialists from leaving open the possibility of forming a government with Rutte fours years ago.

    The difference is that their competitor on the left, the Labor Party, formed a coalition with the liberals in 2012 instead. Now the Socialists seek to claim the mantle of left-wing purists. (more…)

  • Wilders’ Negativity an Opportunity for Optimist Rutte

    Mark Rutte
    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte listens to a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, January 20 (European Parliament)

    Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders may have just dictated the terms on which the Dutch election next year will be fought — and under which his rival, the incumbent prime minister Mark Rutte, is more likely to be prevail.

    I wrote earlier this year that echoes of America’s presidential election could be heard in the Netherlands: Wilders shares an under-siege rhetoric and unceremonious style of politics with Donald Trump; Rutte, like Hillary Clinton, celebrates the country the Netherlands is, rather than it used to be, and represents consensus and a respect for political norms.

    Those differences were driven home last week, when Wilders was found guilty of inciting discrimination by a panel of three judges for promising “fewer Moroccans” in the city of The Hague. (more…)

  • Wonder Boy Asscher Could Disappoint Dutch Labor Party

    Dutch Labor Party members elected Social Affairs Minister Lodewijk Asscher as their leader on Friday, hoping he will be able to give the party a prime minister again.

    Labor’s last prime minister was Wim Kok, who governed from 1994 to 2002.

    The party has since developed a tendency to elect “wonder boys” who fail to live up to expectations.

    Wouter Bos and Diederik Samsom, two of Asscher’s predecessors, were both elected in their forties. They both managed to make Labor the second largest party and they both subsequently went into government with the center-right, to the dismay of the left.

    Job Cohen, the former mayor of Amsterdam, was seen as a prime ministerial candidate in 2010. But when Labor placed second in that election too, Cohen turned out to be ill-suited for the role of opposition leader. He resigned two years later. (more…)