Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders announced on Tuesday that his PVV party would be exiting the ruling coalition, leading to the collapse of the right-wing government.
Wilders said his coalition partners were not willing to embrace his ideas of halting asylum migration, for which he had demanded immediate support last week.
Looming Threat
“No signature for our asylum plans. No changes to the Main Outline Agreement. PVV leaves the coalition.” Wilders said in a post on X, that was translated to English from Dutch.
Wilders threatened on Monday to topple the Netherlands‘ already fragile right-wing government, which he said did not back his ideas for stricter asylum policies.
The coalition led by Wilders’ PVV party had struggled to reach any consensus since its installation in July last year, and needed to tackle tough decisions in the coming months, including a possible historic increase in military spending to meet new NATO targets.
Caretaker Govt. To Host NATO Summit
It will likely bring new elections in a few months, adding to political uncertainty in the euro zone’s fifth-largest economy.
It will likely also delay a decision on a possibly historic increase in defense spending to meet new NATO targets.
And it will leave the Netherlands with only a caretaker government when it receives NATO country leaders for a summit to decide on these targets in The Hague later this month.
Decline In Support
Wilders, an anti-Muslim populist, who won the most recent election in the Netherlands, last week demanded immediate support for his proposals to completely halt asylum migration, send Syrian refugees back to their home country and to close asylum shelters.
Coalition partners had not embraced his ideas, and had pointed out that it was up to the migration minister from Wilders’ own party to work on specific proposals.
After meeting government party leaders on Monday evening, Wilders had said this was not enough to secure his continued support for the coalition.
“We have a serious problem,” he had told reporters. “We will take it up again tomorrow morning, but it does not look good.”
Recently, he had congratulated Poland for electing a “patriotic President”, after Nationalist Karol Nawrocki won the tightly contested polls against Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski.
(With inputs from Reuters)
