Santa Claus will be here before a new Dutch government, caretaker PM warns

Don’t expect a new Dutch government in time for the festive season, caretaker Prime Minister Dick Schoof said Friday.

“I think I’ll still be prime minister by Christmas,” Schoof noted on his way into a Cabinet meeting. He said it will be “quite complicated” to form a new coalition, and that he’d be “surprised” if it were done before decorations go up.

Centrist liberal Rob Jetten’s D66 party and Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) are still vying for first place as the final votes are counted following the national election on Wednesday.

Both won 26 seats in the Netherlands’ 150-strong parliament, according to nearly complete results; while the conservative-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) won 22, the left-wing GreenLeft-Labor (GL-PvdA) alliance got 20 and the center-right Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) snagged 18.

The largest party typically gets the right to try to assemble a governing coalition first. Jetten’s D66 is slightly ahead of Wilders’ PVV with a margin of just 15,000 votes, with 99.7 percent counted nationally. Still, the results of the last municipality are due Friday, and the tally of an estimated 90,000 mail votes is expected Monday.

Regardless of the outcome, Wilders has next to no chance of joining the next government, let alone leading it, as several parties have ruled out collaborating with his party. That means Jetten is the favorite to become the new prime minister.

But VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz also repeatedly ruled out governing with GreenLeft-Labor in the run-up to the election, potentially complicating D66-led negotiations. With 26 seats, D66 would be an exceptionally small largest party in the government, and without GreenLeft-Labor, a future coalition would require five parties to reach a majority.

That doesn’t have to be a problem, however, Schoof said, looking across the border for inspiration.

“That’s what they have in Belgium, so it’s possible,” he said. The number of parties doesn’t matter, as long as you “agree on what you want to do, and then stick together and support each other,” he added.

This week’s vote came just two years after the Netherlands’ previous election. Schoof’s government, a coalition of PVV with the VVD, the centrist New Social Contract (NSC), and the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), was marked by infighting and collapsed within a year when Wilders withdrew his party over a dispute about asylum policy.

NSC, with 20 seats, was one of the biggest winners in the 2023 election, but secured none in this week’s vote. Former party leader and founder Pieter Omtzigt left politics earlier this year. Other parties in the former government also lost seats, including Wilders’ PVV, which dropped 11 seats.

Schoof acknowledged the parties in his government had been punished, while NSC “evaporated.”

“I think people are unhappy with what’s been delivered, and about the fact that the Cabinet hasn’t managed to see things through,” he said.