It took six months of protracted negotiations to form the current Dutch government. Now, just 11 months later, it appears to have collapsed following the abrupt withdrawal of far-right leader Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party (PVV) from the four-way coalition with the populist Farmer-Citizens Movement (BBB), the centrist New Social Contract (NSC) and the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). The return of political uncertainty to the Netherlands is not unexpected. It reflects the growing volatility of coalition politics across Europe and the hazards of appeasing populism in the corridors of power.
From the outset, the coalition was an uneasy marriage. The inclusion of the PVV, the Netherlands’ largest party but long considered politically untouchable due to its anti-immigrant, anti-Islam platform, was a sharp pivot from the Dutch tradition of moderate centrism and careful consensus. It was justified as a necessary compromise to secure stability. Yet bringing the far-right into government did not domesticate its ambitions. It merely moved the arena of disruption from the opposition benches to the cabinet table.
The collapse was triggered by the government’s failure to accept Wilders’s 10-point plan to radically reduce immigration and asylum, which legal experts say would have breached European law. 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.
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With prime minister Dick Schoof’s resignation, voters must now brace themselves for a snap election. The challenge will be forming a government with enough coherence and conviction to hold.
