The formation of Rutte IV was full of incidents ('Remove function elsewhere'), lasted almost ten months and damaged confidence in politics.
The next cabinet formation must be more transparent and faster, according to Caroline van der Plas of BBB and Pieter Omtzigt, then an independent Member of Parliament. In a parliamentary debate at the end of October last year, a month before the elections, the BBB leader promised that when she sits at the formation table, she will be much more open about the negotiations. “Then it was said: it was a good conversation and you will hear more about it. I'm not going to do that, I'm going to say what I said here, I think people have the right to that.”
That day, Pieter Omtzigt, together with Laurens Dassen (Volt) and Joost Eerdmans (JA21), comes up with a proposal: set deadlines of six weeks in the formation. “That seems to me to be a reasonable period within which you should be able to take significant steps,” says Omtzigt.
After the elections in November, Van der Plas and Omtzigt quickly came together at the formation table. It is now early February, and more than two months after election day, the first formation attempt by the PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB failed this week. It also appears to be quite difficult for relative newcomers BBB and NSC to break old patterns, now that they are at the formation controls themselves.
Caroline van der Plas often politely spoke to journalists in recent weeks, but she did not want to say what she had brought to the table with BBB. Because the four parties had agreed to “radio silence” – exactly as with previous formations. The communication from and between the negotiators that did exist seemed to go mainly through X, where Omtzigt, Wilders, Yesilgöz and Van der Plas regularly exchanged insults with each other.
Wrong transparency
“Precisely the wrong transparency,” says Volt leader Dassen. “We seem to have ended up in a Twitter democracy. If you are serious about reaching an agreement, you won't be constantly tweeting about each other.” On an important question on the table, namely whether PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB could have jointly established a “baseline” on dealing with the constitution and the democratic constitutional state, no clarity was provided by the parties or informant Ronald Plasterk. A missed opportunity, says Dassen. “You expect that you will receive feedback on such a fundamental point.”
The proposal to work with six-week deadlines did not receive a majority in Parliament and was therefore not an obligation. In practice, Omtzigt and his interlocutors were certainly not successful: this first phase lasted more than eight weeks, calculated from the first conversation. And the “major steps” that Omtzigt thought possible during that period did not materialize either. Negotiations have only been conducted on the main points, there is a prospect of an agreement and the cabinet was far from in place when Omtzigt stopped the talks on Tuesday.
Now the election results did not make a quick formation easy, especially because of the PVV's big win. Wilders' party is excluded by a number of (centre) left parties due to its extreme views on Islam, for example. At NSC too, joining a cabinet with the PVV was very complicated from the start. Tolerating a right-wing cabinet, Omtzigt did see it as an option, but VVD leader Yesilgöz also claimed exactly that role two days after the elections.
Although Omtzigt left the negotiating table this week, he wrote in a letter to the NSC members that he still sees “constructive support” for a minority cabinet or “a broad extra-parliamentary cabinet” as good options in the next formation round. The question is whether informant Plasterk will comment on these variants in his report next Monday and whether these variants, which are unusual for the Netherlands, can still stimulate this formation.
A serious possibility for a right-wing minority cabinet is a cabinet consisting of PVV, VVD and BBB, good for 68 seats in the House of Representatives. This variant requires the VVD to join a cabinet and provide ministers, something Yesilgöz previously did not want. The three parties can then choose, for example, to conclude a tolerance agreement with the NSC of Omtzigt, as VVD and CDA did with the PVV in 2010, but that is not necessary, because they can also try to work with different majorities in the House of Representatives. . The advantage of fixed agreements with NSC is that a minority cabinet cannot quickly be voted out with a motion of no confidence.
Poverty or wealth
The central question surrounding a minority cabinet is why you want it, says Corné Smit, who is researching minority cabinets as an external PhD candidate at Leiden University. “It is important whether it is a choice of poverty or wealth. If PVV, VVD and BBB think they can make agreements with Omtzigt about limiting migration, and also see agreement on other themes, it could be a good option. It would be nice if there were other opposition parties that wanted to talk to such a cabinet.”
Exactly that could be difficult in a minority cabinet with the PVV. Parties such as GroenLinks-PvdA and D66 rule out cooperation with Wilders, and therefore the question is how they would deal with such a minority cabinet. Completely boycotting such a cabinet would go far and is not realistic, thinks Carla van Baalen, emeritus professor of parliamentary history at Radboud University. “Suppose PVV, VVD and BBB abolish the deductible in healthcare, would the left-wing parties vote against this because they want to oppose such a cabinet in principle? I really have to see that.”
In Scandinavian countries, where a lot of experience has been gained with minority cabinets, left-wing parties did do business with right-wing minority cabinets. Smit mentions Denmark, where the social democrats, for example, supported agreements to limit migration, but other left-wing parties did not. In Denmark, minority cabinets often also concluded partial agreements on subjects. Smit: “Last year, for example, the government concluded a long-term deal to increase defense expenditure to NATO's 2 percent standard. Both right-wing and left-wing parties participate in that agreement.”
A crucial difference between Denmark and the Netherlands is that the radical right Danish People's Party was never part of the government, and that the PVV may now become part of the government. Can a “broad extra-parliamentary cabinet” still offer a solution? In an extra-parliamentary cabinet, the bond between government and parliament is much looser, and several parties delegate ministers. Or professionals from outside politics are asked to write an outline government program together. In theory, such a cabinet could receive support from many more parties than the current four right-wing parties.
The PVV could also remain the problem here, if other parties would still not accept that Geert Wilders, for example, asks ministers from outside his party. Or could NSC leader Omtzigt perhaps mean by “broad” that the PVV is not participating at all, and does he want parties such as GroenLinks-PvdA, D66, Volt or the CDA to join VVD, NSC and BBB? That is very possible, says Carla van Baalen. “The largest party does not have to co-govern. It also happened in 1977. The PvdA then won ten seats and was the big winner of the elections, but was ultimately excluded by the CDA and the VVD. The PvdA was furious. But that's how democracy works sometimes.”
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