Dutch Prime Minister, Dick Schoof has stepped down from his post following Geert Wilders’s decision to quit the coalition government over a dispute about asylum and immigration policy.
Schoof is expected to offer the resignation of the cabinet to King Willem-Alexander before the end of the day.
Schoof called Wilders’ decision “irresponsible and unnecessary.” “As far as I’m concerned, this shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Schoof said that his coalition government will become a caretaker administration up until the new election, a date for which has not been set yet.
It means that the Netherlands will have a caretaker government when it hosts a summit of NATO leaders in three weeks, during which members will likely be asked to commit more money to defence spending amid continued Russian aggression.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Dutch far-right leader, Geert Wilders pulled his party out of the country’s four-party ruling coalition, signalling the probable collapse of the Netherlands’ 11-month-old government.
Wilders, whose populist, anti-Islam Freedom party (PVV) finished as the largest in parliament in the last elections, said on Tuesday that he had informed the prime minister, Dick Schoof, that all PVV ministers would leave the government.
Speaking to reporters after earlier announcing on social media that since there had been “no signoff on our asylum plans” the PVV was “leaving the coalition,” Wilders stated, “I signed up for the toughest asylum policy, not the downfall of the Netherlands.”
The coalition between the PVV, the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), the centrist New Social Contract (NSC) and the liberal-conservative VVD took nearly six months to form and has come under sustained fire from Wilders, who is not a cabinet member.
He wanted it to adopt a 10-point plan aimed at radically reducing immigration and asylum. Legal experts have said several of the proposals breach European human rights laws or the UN refugee convention, to which the Netherlands is a signatory.
Wilders’s plan includes enlisting the army to secure and patrol the borders, turning all asylum seekers back at the border, shutting refugee accommodation facilities, sending all Syrian refugees home, suspending EU asylum quotas and banning family members joining refugees already in the country.
Frustrated by the lack of progress, he warned at a press conference last week that if immigration policy was not radically tightened by implementing the points on his list, the PVV – the largest party in parliament, with 37 seats – would be “out of the cabinet.”
Coalition partners did not embrace his idea, saying it was up to the migration minister from Wilders’ own party to work on specific proposals to be put to parliament.
Wilders’ announcement followed a brief early morning meeting of the four party leaders in the already fractious and fragile coalition, the first to include the far-right PVV, which has struggled to reach consensus on much since it was sworn in last July.
Call For Fresh Elections
Frans Timmermans, the leader of the opposition Labour/Green alliance, suggested that fresh elections were the only option. “I see no other way to form a stable government,” Timmermans, a former European Commission Vice President, said.
Meanwhile, the coalition partners reacted with anger and disbelief to Wilders’ decision.
Dilan Yeşilgöz, the VVD leader, said that Schoof had appealed to the four party leaders to act responsibly before Tuesday morning’s meeting. “He said we are facing enormous international challenges, we have a war on our continent, an economic crisis may be coming our way,” Yeşilgöz said.
She added that she was “shocked” by Wilders’ decision, which she called “super-irresponsible.”
“We had a rightwing majority and he lets it all go, for his ego. He’s just doing what he wants … This is making us look like fools. He’s running away, at a time of unprecedented uncertainty.”
Dilan Yeşilgöz
Also, Caroline van der Plas of the BBB said that she was extremely angry, adding, “He is not putting the Netherlands first, he is putting Geert Wilders first.”
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