The Netherlands: Wilders brings down government
The four-party coalition government in The Hague has collapsed. Geert Wilders' right-wing populist PVV had presented plans for a significant tightening of the asylum laws last week and made the party's continued participation conditional on their acceptance, but the three other coalition partners rejected the ultimatum. After a crisis meeting on Tuesday, the PVV recalled its ministers and Prime Minister Dick Schoof resigned. Europe's press takes stock and looks ahead.
Voters left in the lurch
The coalition was bound to collapse, writes NRC:
“The PVV doesn't appear to have undergone the same development as other far-right parties in Europe. Its populist DNA stands in the way of its being in government. This is a major democratic problem. Disgruntled voters who want to make their voices heard in The Hague deserve to have their problems taken seriously. This year has been one of stagnation, even on issues that are really important to right-wing voters, such as nitrogen [in fertilisers], migration and housing. Voters, left and right, have been badly let down.”
You can't run a country with extremists
The strategy of the VDD, which for a long time played a dominant role, did not work out, writes The Irish Times:
“It leaves Dilan Yesilgöz’s VVD in an awkward position. The party had gambled on pragmatism over principle, hoping to neutralise extremism through inclusion. Instead, it has found itself destabilised by it, with public trust in government eroded further by scenes of ministerial disarray. The broader lesson is stark. The Netherlands, like much of Europe, faces a fracturing political landscape. Electoral fragmentation and the rise of ideologically extreme parties mean that coalitions are now brittle, stretched thin across deep ideological divides.”
A lesson for Europe's conservatives
Other centre-right parties in Europe should take a closer look, Handelsblatt recommends:
“Conservatives elsewhere in Western Europe are also increasingly tempted to give the right-wing populists and extremists a try. ... But the example of the Netherlands shows that things get difficult at the national level at the latest when it comes to the big issues. That's when the willingness to compromise, which is sometimes evident at the regional level, reaches its limits. The collapse of the coalition in The Hague should also serve as a warning to regional East German branches of the Christian Democratic Union. Any thoughts of forming coalitions with the AfD will lead to exactly where Dutch politics is now - in the hands of a right-wing populist leader.”
Unpredictable and uncompromising
The centre must now stand together, writes the Tages-Anzeiger:
“Wilders is not a normal politician. He's not a reliable partner who would sometimes back down in the interests of the general public because he knows there is no alternative in a parliamentary democracy. He is an instinctive populist, unpredictable, erratic and reckless like Donald Trump. Someone who prefers chaos to compromise. And who, when he no longer feels like it - or senses an advantage in it - throws everything up in the air at the drop of a hat. ... Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals must come together to form an attractive centrist bloc and agree on real solutions to many people's problems.”
Clarity essential in election campaign
De Volkskrant looks ahead:
“The voters, the majority of whom remain on the right, deserve better. ... Wilders wants to go into the election campaign as a victim of the unruly Hague elite. If the other right-wing parties, above all the VVD, put up as little resistance as last time, he could actually win with that strategy. To prevent this they must make it clear that from now on they will only govern with parties that have what it takes in practice, are democratically organised and respect the Dutch constitutional state and the international legal order.”