It took 223 days to get there.
But the Dutch king on Tuesday gave his blessing to a new Cabinet — a formal but important final step in the formation of the most right-wing government in the country’s recent history.
Dick Schoof, a former Dutch intelligence boss of no party alignment and who was not on the ballot in the November election, is replacing Mark Rutte as prime minister.
As the party that gained the most votes, the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) got the first pick of ministers, claiming posts on asylum, infrastructure, economic affairs, foreign trade and health care.
The liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of NATO-bound Rutte managed to score finance, the second-most powerful position in the government. The VVD also placed ministers on defense, climate and green growth, and justice.
The recently founded centrist New Social Contract (NSC) gets to head both home and foreign affairs, plus the education ministry along with social affairs.
Another fledgling party, the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), will hold the scepter on housing and agriculture.
But despite taking nearly seven-and-a-half months to bring it all together, time does not a solid coalition make. On the contrary, tensions among the four parties appear to have increased over the course of the government’s formation.
Some Dutch commentators have already characterized Schoof’s team as constituting four separate Cabinets rather than a single united one.
Geerten Boogaard, a professor of local government at the University of Leiden, noted the risk is high that “each political actor will be lobbying for their own interest and maintaining their power base, rather than work toward collective success.”
As the new government posed on the stairs of the Royal Palace in The Hague, many wondered: How long before the dam bursts?
1. The upcoming Cabinet has 29 members. Anyone in particular we should pay attention to?
Let’s start with two that are bound to clash: Housing Minister Mona Keijzer and her fellow BBB party member Femke Wiersma on agriculture and nature. They are — crudely put — in charge of deciding whether the small country of the Netherlands makes space for housing humans or keeping cows.
And then there’s the PVV, in particular: Marjolein Faber, the new migration minister, is already one of the most controversial people in the new Cabinet (despite being the second choice). Even PVV insiders see her as a hard-liner.
She’s most famous for referencing the “great replacement theory” in a speech — the claim promoted by the Nazis and carried forward by white supremacists that there is a conspiracy to replace Europe’s white population.
At a confirmation hearing last week, she distanced herself from her past statements — saying she made them as a member of the opposition. But that in her new role of minister, such terminology would be “incorrect and undesirable.”
2. Sounds like a swell team … what has the response been?
Many are holding their breath — and nose.
Rutger Groot Wassink, an Amsterdam legislator for the Green Left alliance, caused a furor after he outright told the Dutch newspaper Parool that he would not even pick up the phone, were Faber to call.
“I don’t want to normalize that which is not normal,” he said. “It’s not like the rule of law will be abolished next week. But winter is coming.”
A day later, he softened his tone somewhat — but by then, debate had already broken out over how opponents of the new government, and critics of the PVV, could be expected to work with it and implement its policies at a local level.
According to Boogaard, the Leiden professor, the level of resistance to the new Cabinet, even before it has been installed, is highly unusual. This hints at a big challenge.
“In a relatively strongly decentralized country like the Netherlands, cooperation between the center and local levels of government has always been crucial,” he told POLITICO, adding that grassroots party structures and personal ties play an important role in smoothing over any rifts.
“That traditional glue does not exist now.”
But, he added, at this point, a cordon sanitaire approach like that suggested by Wassink might be a “bigger risk to democracy than letting the pyromaniac into the engine room,” in the sense of allowing the PVV to run the show.
3. Where does Brussels come in?
It’s going to be a rough ride.
The center-left daily Volkskrant in May cited an anonymous EU diplomat as describing the new government’s ruling agreement as “a three-front war against the EU,” in reference to the government’s stated aim to secure opt-outs for migration and environmental rules. Not to mention reducing its contribution to the bloc’s budget by €1.6 billion.
Schoof’s team has also been tasked with carving out sharper rules on the free movement of people from other EU countries into the Netherlands. Good luck trying to chuck away one of the EU’s crown jewels.
One complication is that most ministers have never done politics in Brussels before, and will need to settle into the role of negotiating with colleagues from the diverse cultural and political backgrounds of 26 other countries.
Even someone like Rutte — who became famous for how well he navigated summits of EU leaders — needed time to settle into the game. And he was a master of give-and-take politics.
Schoof and his team will now get to work on turning the main points of the agreement into actual policy targets before late September, when the budget plan is set to be announced.
While some fear the swearing in of the new government may mark the coming of winter, the PVV’s leader Geert Wilders promises “The sun will shine again.”
