Far-right firebrand Geert Wilders’ chances of becoming prime minister of the Netherlands are narrowing after one of his key potential partners walked out of coalition talks on Tuesday night.
Pieter Omtzigt, founder and leader of the centre-right New Social Contract (NSC), said he could not join the government but might support it from outside.
He has long raised questions about the anti-Islam campaigner’s suitability for office, but NSC has now said it is “shocked” by new information about budget shortfalls, which analysts say would worsen under Wilders’s free-spending policy programme.
“NSC does not want to make promises to the Dutch people, which it knows in advance . . . cannot be kept”, it said in a statement.
“Unbelievably disappointing,” said Wilders on social media. “The Netherlands wants this cabinet and Pieter Omtzigt throws in the towel even though we were in talks today. I don’t understand it at all.”
Wilders has the right to try first to form a government after his Freedom party (PVV) won 26 per cent of the vote in elections in November, making it the biggest in parliament. But prospective talks with centrist and right-wing parties have been fraught.
A veteran party official said: “There are three possibilities: a rightwing government led by Wilders; a government with a Labour-Green alliance or another election. I don’t see how any of them can happen.”
Labour’s Ronald Plasterk, the former education minister chairing the talks, will meet the leaders of the four parties, including Omtzigt, on Wednesday. The conservative VVD party of outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte and the populist Farmer-Citizens Movement are other prospective allies.
“It’s a stalemate,” said Sarah de Lange, politics professor at the University of Amsterdam. Coalition partners needed to first clarify “whether Wilders will respect the constitution”, she said.
Omtzigt has in the past said Wilders’ pledges such as banning the Koran and closing down mosques and Islamic centres breach the constitution. While the far-right leader has reduced that rhetoric after the elections, Dutch politicians are still sceptical about his true intentions.
Wilders’ victory was a political earthquake for the Netherlands and sent shockwaves across Europe, where far-right parties have been advancing ahead of elections for the European parliament in June, amid discontent over immigration, expensive climate policies and living standards.
Wilders would be the first far-right leader to take power in an EU country in recent times. Though hard-right parties have been part of ruling coalitions in Austria and Nordic countries and Matteo Salvini’s far-right League is a junior partner in Giorgia Meloni’s Italian government, mainstream parties in most countries, notably in France and Germany, have refused to co-operate with them.
Installing Wilders in the Tower, as the Dutch leader’s office is known, would also mark a profound change for an EU founding member in which almost 10 per cent of the 18mn-strong population comes from ethnic minorities.
In an attempt to pressure other parties into supporting his government, Wilders last month threatened snap elections, as polls show his PVV would grow stronger if another vote was held.
In the meantime, Rutte remains prime minister at the head of a caretaker administration composed of the four-party coalition that collapsed in a dispute over immigration in July.
Migration policy is another stumbling block for Wilders. He wants a complete freeze on arrivals, which is unrealistic given that the Netherlands is part of Europe’s border-free Schengen area. Other rightwing parties are seeking to reduce immigration and manage it better.
Differences over government spending are also an obstacle. The PVV has promised free bus transport, improved health and social care spending and reduced taxes — without having any concrete plans on how to fund it all.
The VVD favours restricting spending while NSC would increase wealth taxes to fund outlays. Dutch central bank president Klaas Knot last week said any new coalition should implement €17bn in cuts to limit the country’s budget deficit to 2 per cent of gross domestic product.
VVD leader and acting justice minister Dilan Yeşilgöz is struggling to control her party. While she initially ruled out joining a Wilders-led government, a majority of VVD voters favour doing so. She said on Tuesday she remained committed to talks.
Opposition parties have condemned their rivals for talking to Wilders. “Mainstream Dutch conservatives have snookered themselves by campaigning on migration and then opening the door to the radical right. They face a problem as insoluble as squaring a circle,” said Rob Jetten, leader of the progressive liberal D66, which lost heavily in the election.
“On one hand they want fiscal prudence, economic growth, international respectability. On the other they want to bring to power a man who idolises [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin and [rightwing Hungarian premier Viktor] Orbán, who sees Brexit as a model to aspire to, whose . . . political radicalism betrays Dutch values and economic interests.”
If Wilders fails to form a government, Plasterk could decide to turn to the runner-up, the Labour-Green alliance led by former EU commissioner Frans Timmermans. But that coalition would be even more unwieldy, as it would involve at least four parties from across the political spectrum to reach a majority.
New elections might be the only way out, even if they would turn into a “blame game”, said a Labour-Green spokesperson.
Independent pollster Maurice de Hond warned last week that if other parties shunned a coalition with Wilders, it would only further radicalise voters.
“People do not realise how much they are playing with fire, because the consequences of the failure of [rightwing coalition talks] would be very great,” he said.
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