Why did the Dutch government collapse?

For months, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has negotiated a package of measures to reduce the flow of new immigrants into the country of almost 18 million people.

Two-tier asylum classification and caps for family reunification

The proposals included the creation of two kinds of asylum: a temporary one for people fleeing conflict and a permanent one for people fleeing persecution. In addition, he planned to reduce the number of family members allowed to join asylum seekers in the Netherlands. The minority Christian Union party strongly opposed the idea of ​​blocking family members.

Rutte’s Forum for Democracy (VVD) party, supported by the Christian Democratic Campaign, also demanded limiting the entry of children of war refugees already present in the country and making families wait two years before being able to reunite.

Pieter Heerma, the leader of the Christian Democrats, a coalition partner, called Rutte’s approach in the talks “almost reckless.”

According to government statistics, asylum applications in the Netherlands increased by a third last year to more than 46,000, and are expected to rise to more than 70,000 this year, surpassing the previous high of 2015.

Immigration has been a hot topic across the European Union for years and was the latest stumbling block that brought down the Rutte government on Friday night, exposing deep ideological differences between the four parties that made up the uneasy coalition.

Now it is likely that he will dominate the campaign for the elections in a few months.

Opposition parties are already campaigning

The opposition parties wasted no time in calling general elections.

“We are the party that can secure a majority to significantly restrict the flow of asylum seekers,” said Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party. He supported Rutte’s first minority coalition 13 years ago, but eventually ousted it.

Left-wing opposition parties also want the election to focus on tackling issues they accuse Rutte of failing to adequately address, from climate change to chronic housing shortages to the future of the nation’s multibillion-dollar agricultural sector.

Socialist Party leader Lilian Marijnissen told Dutch broadcaster NOS that the collapse of Rutte’s government was “good news for the Netherlands. I think everyone felt that this Cabinet was done. They have created more problems than they have solved.”

Despite divisions among the four parties in Rutte’s government, he will remain in power as an interim administration until a new coalition is formed, but he will not pass major new laws.

Rutte, the longest-serving prime minister of the Netherlands and a veteran consensus-builder, appeared to be the one prepared to torpedo his fourth coalition government with tough demands in negotiations on how to reduce the number of migrants seeking asylum. in his country.

The fall of the government comes just months after a new populist pro-farmer party, the Citizen Farmers Movement, known by its Dutch acronym BBB, shocked the political establishment by winning provincial elections. The party is already the largest bloc in the Dutch Senate and will be a serious threat to Rutte’s VVD.

BBB leader Caroline van der Plas said her party would dust off the provincial vote campaign posters and return.

“The campaign has started!” Van der Plas said in a tweet that he was showing supporters of his party by hanging flags and banners from light poles.