The government negotiations in the Netherlands have been stalled for two months already, and now one of the parties left the game.
Government shortage in the Netherlands of about 18 million inhabitants continues when the government negotiations that followed the November parliamentary elections do not move forward.
This past week, the negotiations even took a noticeable setback, when one of the parties in the sought-after government coalition, the NSC, i.e. the New Social Contract, left the negotiating table.
The government negotiations continued on Thursday in The Hague, albeit without the party leader of the NSC Pieter Omtzigt.
The Hague is the administrative city of the Netherlands. The Netherlands is the country's official name, but Finnish is often spoken of as Holland.
New attempts have been made to form a government for two months now. A right-wing populist is running for prime minister Geert Wilderswhose anti-immigration and EU-critical Freedom Party PVV achieved a landslide victory in the November elections.
The Freedom Party received 37 MPs in the 150-seat Dutch parliament. Since the party field is fragmented, a coalition of several parties would be needed to form a majority government.
In addition to the PVV, only the centre-right VVD and the rural party BBB remain in the negotiations. Together, these do not have a majority in the parliament.
The government forming it is already difficult from the start, because there are big ideological differences between the parties.
Wilders' election program included, among other things, radical measures against Muslims such as closing mosques and banning the Koran. The Freedom Party has also presented the Netherlands' departure from the EU.
“Poisoning, barbs, bad words”, the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad characterized the government negotiations so far, according to the news agency AFP.
“But also content disagreements, and the background of all this is a lack of money,” the paper wrote.
Acutely the reason for the stumbling of the government negotiations this week was the new information about the billion-dollar savings needs in the public economy. In that respect, the discussion resembles the economic discussion in Finland.
The central bank of the Netherlands has talked about cuts of up to 17 billion euros. The country's public broadcasting company According to NOS the Ministry of Finance has prepared a long list of possible savings targets for politicians to decide.
At the extreme end of the list would be a complete reduction in development aid (eight billion euros). From the smallest point of view, prison meals would be a no-brainer: if Dutch prisoners ate vegetarian food six days a week, the state would save two million euros a year.
Board negotiations slowly creep forward. The alternatives are mainly a minority government or a completely different form of government. Only a few people are enthusiastic about the repeat elections in the Netherlands.
For the time being, the Netherlands is led by an executive ministry, i.e. a centre-right prime minister Mark Rutten old government.
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