Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will start negotiations on the formation of a new coalition government after avoiding setbacks for a comfortable victory in a national election marked by a wave of support for progressive and pro-European forces.
With 80% of the votes counted, Rutte’s liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) ran for 35 seats in the Dutch parliament of 150 seats, two more than in the previous 2017 vote, guaranteeing him a fourth consecutive term.
Rutte survived a mediocre coronavirus pandemic record that killed more than 16,000 people in the Netherlands, three nights of curfew riots and a child benefit scandal that forced his office to resign in January.
The popular prime minister benefited from a rally boost around the flag at the start of the pandemic last year and, despite the recent drop in polls, has maintained the confidence of many voters who clearly preferred stability in times of crisis.
“Voters gave my party an overwhelming vote of confidence,” said Rutte after the first results were released. “I think everyone wants a new cabinet as soon as possible. We are in the middle of a very serious crisis and we will do our best ”.
The big winner, however, was D66, a progressive, socially liberal and pro-European party named after the year in which it was founded and headed by a former UN diplomat, Sigrid Kaag.
The D66 won a record of 24 seats, five more than last time, to finish in second place. It surpassed the other main partner of the Rutte coalition, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), which lost four seats to 15, and the far-right and anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders, whose Party of Freedom (PVV) lost three parliamentarians and was in progress by 17.
It should also change the dynamics of the coalition and may even make the Netherlands hard-line – one of the “frugal” group of four EU fiscal states conservatively opposed to a common European budget and collective debt – a little more conciliatory in Europe .
Kaag, whose campaign emphasized her gender and cosmopolitan origin (married to a Palestinian, she spoke strongly against racism in the Netherlands) tweeted a picture of her dancing at a table in celebration.
She described the outcome as “a great responsibility”, but added that she expects government policy to be noticeably “more progressive, more just and greener” than in the past four years.
“The real question now is: what can the D66 gain from the new coalition?” said Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia. “He no longer has an excuse to sell his left-wing socio-cultural agenda to satisfy his right-wing socio-economic agenda and coalition partners.”
Pro-Europeans were also excited by the performance of Volt, a pan-European party launched in 2017, which won four seats. The big losers, however, were left-wing parties, which analysts now expect to be forced to make big changes.
The Dutch Labor Party (PvdA), which lost three-quarters of its seats in a catastrophic display in 2017, failed to recover any, remaining at nine, while Esquerda Verde, one of the big winners in 2017, lost half of its deputies to finish with seven and the Socialist Party poured out five, remaining at nine.
On the far right, while Wilders’ PVV had gotten worse than in 2017, Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy (FvD) won six seats to finish in eight after fighting in a populist campaign that promised to abolish Covid’s blocking measures .
A new far-right party, JA21, founded by two separatist FvD members, was underway to take four seats, meaning that the combined far-right parties in the Netherlands will now have more parliamentarians than the combined left parties.
With an almost record of 37 parties running for election and 17 likely to reach parliament, the shape of any future government is still up in the air. Coalitions can take months, with negotiations in 2017 lasting a record 208 days.
Rutte ruled out a coalition with Wilders and Baudet, but said he “obviously” would look to work with D66 again and that Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra’s CDA would also be a “natural partner”. These three parties, however, do not appear to have a 76-seat majority, which means that the coalition is likely to need a fourth member.