No tracking. No cookies
Subscriptions
Subscriptions
Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on ‘what the papers don’t say’ – without fear or favour.
For digital and print editions, packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, features, and columns….
On Tuesday morning, Dutch democracy survived – just. At 9 o’clock sharp, Geert Wilders waved away his secretary when she entered his office to serve coffee. On the table in front of him was a 22-page document containing ‘the strictest asylum policy ever’.
He ordered the three ladies facing him to sign the papers.
They refused.
Eight minutes later, Wilders, the leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), the surprise winner of the national elections in November 2023 and the largest party in Dutch parliament, muttered: “I don’t want this anymore.”
He stood up and left the room.
The government had fallen.
With him in that room were Dilan Yesilgöz, leader of the liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD); Caroline van der Plas, leader of the populist Farmer-CitizenMovement (BBB); and Nicolien van Vroonhoven, leader of the centrist New Social Contract (NSC).
Together, they had formed the governing coalition that ruled the Netherlands for eleven months and one day.
‘Leader’ is a tricky word here. None of them were actually in government: last year, after four months of negotiations riddled with suspicion, insults and press leaks, they could only agree on ruling the country together on the condition that the four party bosses would not themselves have a place in the cabinet.
In the meantime, each party has plummeted in the polls: NSC, for example, would currently count for one seat in parliament, down from twenty on election night.
Most importantly, all three have been held hostage by Wilders all this time. From his seat in parliament, surrounded by 36 hand-picked followers, he dictated the trajectory of the cabinet (which included nine PVV ministers and deputy ministers) through X.
The man who is the sole member of his party decides everything on his own.
His aggressive, malicious and often downright dictatorial tweets overruled proceedings. He reduced Prime Minister Dick Schoof, a seasoned civil servant who was acceptable to Wilders only because he carried no party membership, to fumbling irrelevance.
Schoof was not invited to the meeting on Tuesday morning. He had spent Monday night calling all four of them, begging them to inform him if the cabinet were to fall: “Please don’t make me hear that it’s over through the media.”
In the end, he got the news when Wilders tweeted it on X.
There are more tricky words here: liberal-conservative, populist, centrist.
Back in normal times, these epithets were commonly used by the parties themselves, the press and the general public.
Today, they serve as camouflage for collaborating with the neo-fascist, racist, misogynist, queer-bashing, xenophobic, climate-denying Islamophobic politics of Wilders and his party.
Take the 22-page document that the three ladies refused to sign– not out of heroic resistance, by the way, but because they believed it would simply be passed and stamped where policy is traditionally approved: in parliament.
That Wilders’ solution to the refugee issue – having the army close the borders and turn back all asylum seekers – was unconstitutional and incompatible with European and human rights agreements didn’t strike them as a problem in itself.
Or take the parliamentary motion that was proposed just last Monday: it demanded immediate access to humanitarian aid into Gaza. All four voted against. Their majority assured that the motion was struck down.
And now, Wilders has had enough. He has withdrawn his ministers effective immediately. The Prime Minister has offered the resignation of his cabinet to the King.
He and the remaining ministers will serve as caretakers until the next election, which might take place in November. Dutch democracy has survived. For now.
A dictatorial impulse has run to ground in a parliamentary, rule-based system of checks and balances. Wilders, who has been in parliament for 25 years, knows this system inside out. But he ran out of patience.
Now that he was finally in power, untouchable in his parliamentary seat, safely removed from actual government responsibility, he was convinced he could finally push through his destructive agenda.
Instead, he was forced to discover the staying power of the constitutional order. No government in recent history has produced so little new legislation.
No decisive progress has been made on the most pressing issues this country faces: housing, the poverty gap, agricultural nitrogen, rising consumer prices, AI, the threat of war etc.
In the meantime, the damage done to trust in authorities, tolerance among different parts of the population and general well-being is immense.
ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE
Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.
We’re not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.
Wilders is not the only one who has lost his patience with the pillars of constitutional order.
All over Dutch society, the credibility of the judiciary, the media, the police, the traditions of representative democracy, and, of course, politicians themselves is evaporating fast.
So, the Netherlands are yet another affluent, stable and multicultural democracy in this part of Europe with neo-fascism gnawing at its foundations.
Wilders might be done. But his successor will do more than mutter and walk away.