Wilders first: what the Dutch vote tells Europe before June 2024

The Netherlands voted on 22 November. With almost all ballots counted, Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) has 37 seats in the 150-seat Tweede Kamer, up from 17 in 2021. The joint list of GroenLinks and PvdA led by Frans Timmermans has 25. The VVD of Mark Rutte, now led by Dilan Yesilgöz, has 24, down from 34. Pieter Omtzigt's New Social Contract (NSC) enters parliament with 20. D66 falls from 24 seats to 9.[1] The PVV collected about 2.3 million votes, more than the VVD obtained when it won in 2021.[1] A party that entered the campaign as one contender among four now holds a quarter of the chamber. We think the result deserves a sober reading, and we offer one here.

How the PVV won

The campaign did not turn on Islam. Voters surveyed before the election ranked purchasing power, migration and healthcare as their main concerns, with the housing shortage and the energy transition in fourth and fifth place.[2] The PVV rose in the polls only after Wilders changed his tone. On 15 November he told Nieuwsuur that the anti-Islam positions would not prevent the PVV from joining a government and that "there are more important priorities". He named immigration, asylum, healthcare and social security.[3] The programme on which he was elected did not change. It still asks for a ban on mosques, Islamic schools and the Koran, for a ban on headscarves in government buildings, for the closure of the borders to asylum seekers, for an immediate halt to development aid and for a binding referendum on leaving the European Union.[4]

The distinction between the man's tone and the party's text is the first point we want our readers to hold on to. In 2018 Wilders proposed a law to ban "certain Islamic expressions". The Council of State advised that the proposal was incompatible with the essential principles of the democratic constitutional state.[3] Nothing in the 2023 programme withdraws that proposal. A coalition partner who signs an agreement with the PVV will therefore have to decide what happens to the parts of the programme that the Council of State has already judged unconstitutional. Omtzigt, whose party campaigned on good governance and the rule of law, has said he is "available" for talks but that they will "not be easy".[4]

The arithmetic is unforgiving. A majority requires 76 seats. The PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB together would hold 88. On 24 November Yesilgöz announced that the VVD would not sit in a cabinet after losing nearly a third of its seats and that it would support a centre-right cabinet from parliament on "constructive proposals". Wilders replied that the decision did not make the formation easier and warned that it could take months.[5] This morning the PVV senator chosen as scout, Gom van Strien, resigned hours before the first talks, after a report on fraud allegations linked to Utrecht University files. Wilders now proposes Ronald Plasterk, a former PvdA minister, to replace him.[6] The formation has therefore begun with a minority construction in view and without a scout.

What Europe heard

The reactions outside the Netherlands came faster than the count. Viktor Orbán wrote that "the winds of change are here". Marine Le Pen said that hope for change "remains alive in Europe". Matteo Salvini said that "a new Europe is possible". The Commission said that it "continues to count on a strong Dutch role in the EU".[7] Each of these sentences was written for a different audience, and the last one was written for the markets as much as for The Hague.

We read the European consequences in two registers. The first is the referendum. The PVV programme promises a binding vote on Nexit.[4] The Netherlands is a founding Member State, a euro area member and a country whose land borders are entirely inside the Union. No partner in the likely coalition supports a referendum, and the VVD has conditioned its support on constructive proposals.[5] The Nexit pledge will not pass the Tweede Kamer. It will nonetheless sit in the programme of the largest party of a founding Member State, and the next Dutch government will negotiate in Brussels with that pledge behind it.

The second register is June 2024. Migration is the central issue of the European election campaign that opens in seven months, and the Dutch result has been read in Budapest, Paris and Rome as a boost for the parties that oppose the Union's migration reform.[7] Our generation will vote in that election with the Dutch example in front of it: a party that put its most radical positions aside for a few weeks of campaign, won, and then kept the programme.

We draw four conclusions for the months ahead.

First, the parties that negotiate with the PVV should publish, before any coalition agreement, which lines of the PVV programme they consider incompatible with the Dutch Constitution and the Union's treaties. The Council of State's 2018 opinion gives them a starting point.[3]

Second, the Dutch parliament should treat the Nexit referendum as a question of law before it becomes a question of politics. The Netherlands has no binding referendum in its Constitution, and a change would need two readings and a two-thirds majority. A clear statement to that effect from the formation would remove the issue from the European campaign.[4]

Third, the European institutions should stop answering election results with reassurance. The Commission's line on the Dutch role in the Union is not a reply to 2.3 million voters.[1][7] The reply must come from the Union's record on housing, purchasing power and asylum, which were the issues that decided this vote.[2]

Fourth, the parties of our generation should look at D66. A party that fell from 24 seats to 9 in one term after governing on climate and Europe should ask what its voters got for their trust.[1] The lesson for June is that governing well is the only defence that voters reward.