James Crisp
Thu, 16 May 2024
Geert Wilders, the Party for Freedom (PVV) leader, after the presentation of the agreement for a new cabinet, in the Hague, on Thursday - ROBIN VAN LONKUIJSEN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Geert Wilders said that he would implement the Netherlands’ “strictest-ever” migration policy, as the new Dutch government pledged to quit EU asylum rules, on Thursday.
The plan to opt out of the European laws has put Mr Wilders’ incoming four-party Right-wing coalition government on a collision course with Brussels before it has even taken office.
The firebrand, notorious for his fiercely anti-Islam rhetoric and calls to ban the Koran, won a shock victory in a general election six months ago.
It took until Wednesday before negotiations with the pro-business VVD, the “radical centrist” New Social Contract, and the BBB farmers’ party ended with agreement on a plan for government.
“The sun will shine again in the Netherlands,” Mr Wilders, the founder and leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), said.
“I think that anyone who reads the agreement between us four will see that a lot is going to change in the Netherlands,” he added and predicted “the strictest asylum policy ever”.
Shoulder to shoulder: Geert Wilders (PVV), Dilan Yesilgoz (VVD), Caroline van der Plas (BBB) and Pieter Omtzigt (NSC) present the agreement of their four parties for a new cabinet, at the Hague, on Thursday - Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock
He said there would be a two-year asylum crisis act to drive down numbers arriving in the Netherlands.
The government plans call for a maximum reduction in migrant numbers without giving a hard figure. The agreement includes austere reception centres, a hold on processing asylum applications and only temporary asylum being granted.
“An opt out clause for European asylum and migration policies will be submitted as soon as possible to the European Commission,” the coalition said in its pact.
Mr Wilders said the plan would make the Netherlands less attractive for asylum seekers, adding that “people in Africa and the Middle East will start thinking they might be better off elsewhere”.
The coalition says it would also strive to limit free movement for people from countries joining the EU in the future.
Frans Timmermans, leader of the opposition GreenLeft–Labour party, said the pact was 'disastrous', on Thursday - ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN/AFP
Frans Timmermans, the former EU climate chief and leader of the opposition GreenLeft–Labour party, said the pact was “disastrous”.
Mr Wilders, an ardent eurosceptic, was forced to ditch a campaign promise to hold a Brexit-style Nexit referendum and sacrifice his hopes of being prime minister to get the deal over the line.
The prime minister has not yet been named but the leaders of the other parties are also ruled out.
One name being mentioned is Ronald Plasterk, a former Labour minister who chaired an earlier round of coalition negotiations.
‘Truss lettuce’ stands for prime minister
However, some commentators are sceptical that the new government will last. One podcast, inspired by a British newspaper stunt over Liz Truss’s ill-fated premiership, has already set up a lettuce in competition with Mr Plasterk to see which lasts longest.
The Netherlands joins Hungary and Poland’s previous nationalist government in challenging EU migration policy.
Brussels will resist, as EU countries have already agreed on their migration pact and opt outs are usually discussed in the negotiating phase.
“We have a new pact on migration and asylum, which has been voted upon and confirmed and therefore has to be applied,” the European Commission’s chief spokesman said in Brussels.
“This legislation will be applied and the commission will play its role in making sure it is.”
Senay Boztas in Amsterdam
Thu, 16 May 2024
Netherlands' party leaders of the new coalition government (from left): Caroline van der Plas (Farmer-Citizen), Pieter Omtzigt (New Social Contract),
Dilan Yeşilgöz (Freedom and Democracy) and Geert Wilders (Party for Freedom).Photograph: Sem van der Wal/ANP/AFP/Getty ImagesMore
The Netherlands’ new right-wing coalition government aims to reintroduce daytime speeds of 80mph on motorways as part of a number of proposed changes to the country’s environmental policies which have sparked concern.
The move echoes the anti-green stance of other right-wing parties across the continent, as environmental issues become popular bogeymen for populist politicians. In Germany, for example, heat pumps have been politicised, as members of the far-right party AfD have called the Green party “our enemies’.
On Thursday morning, the far-right politician Geert Wilders announced that his anti-Islam, anti-immigration Party for Freedom was forming a coalition with the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), pro-reform party New Social Contract and the Farmer-Citizen Movement.
A 26-page coalition accord titled “hope, guts and pride” outlined measures aiming to reduce migration, introduce constitutional reform, address a housing and cost-of-living crisis and row back on climate change and pollution policy.
Under previous governments, the Netherlands was seen as one of the forerunners of Europe in adopting renewable energy sources – especially in solar power – and planning to drastically reduce animal farming to address its manure-based pollution problem. But, although the small, low-lying country would be partially submerged without action on rising sea levels and river flood risk, there is little in the accord on climate change.
Echoing far-right sentiment across Europe, Wilders’ own manifesto pledged to give “no billions to unnecessary climate and nitrogen pollution policy” and “stop the hysterical reduction of CO2”, while putting climate rules through the shredder. “For decades, we have been made to fear climate change and although the predicted disaster scenarios – over the whole world – were supposed to get more and more extreme, none of them have happened,” it claimed.
He did not gain enough cross-party support to become prime minister and the coalition will have an experimental structure, recruiting 50% of ministers from business. A multi-year climate change fund remains, although with €1.2bn less invested in the next four years.
Daytime motorway speeds, which had been reduced to 62mph to reduce nitrogen compound pollution, will return to 80mph (130km an hour) “where possible”, subsidised “red diesel” will be reintroduced for farmers from 2027, certain manure pollution measures will be scrapped and the coalition pledges not to enforce compulsory animal farm closures.
Targets for the introduction of heat pumps will be abandoned, and four nuclear plants will be built.
Caroline van der Plas, the leader of the Farmer-Citizen Movement – for the first time representing farmers in government – said: “High-quality agriculture is being protected, and that’s necessary because we have a problem with food security in the world. Dutch farmers don’t have to feed the world, but farmers in the Netherlands can help.”
Left-wing leaders and climate activists were immediately sceptical, pointing out that the coalition also has no majority in the Senate. Frans Timmermans, the leader of the Green Left-Labour alliance – second-largest party in parliament – and former head of Europe’s Green Deal, told Dutch media the EU would never agree to Dutch exemptions: “They say …‘We’ll go to Brussels because we don’t want to keep to the rules about nitrogen’. Brussels will see you coming. You always ask other member states to stick to the rules but you don’t want to do that yourself. Honestly, it is not going to happen.”
Marjan Minnesma, the director of Urgenda, which won a legal battle to make the Dutch state reduce carbon emissions, said the accord risked a stream of court cases. “Previous ministers have tried to do all they can by derogation [provisions within EU law] for agriculture and nitrogen-based emissions … and it’s easy to say you will just stop, but an awful lot is built on EU law,” she told NPO Radio1. “But we are also dependent on the EU because the same farmers export most of their products. This is largely gesture politics.”
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