New Dutch coalition still on course, despite unease about PVV

Despite rumblings at the weekend, the Netherlands is still on course to have a new government involving the far-right PVV by the end of June or beginning of July.

One-to-one conversations between ministerial candidates, prime minister in waiting Dick Schoof and chief coalition negotiator Richard van Zwol are taking place from Monday onwards, ahead of a grilling in parliament next week.

The chats are aimed at making sure ministers understand their roles and that they have to give up all their outside activities to make sure there is no potential conflict of interest. They are the latest in a long list of formalities that have to be completed before ministers can pose with the king.

Meanwhile, the PVV’s candidate for health minister, Fleur Agema, will also be the party’s choice for deputy prime minister, far-right leader Geert Wilders has confirmed.

Agema is one of nine original PVV parliamentarians from 2006 when the party was launched and won its first seats. Seven of those nine are still in the lower house of parliament.

Wilders withdrew his first-choice candidate for deputy prime minister, MP Gidi Markuszower, last week after he failed the routine security check. All four coalition parties each have one deputy PM because the party leaders have agreed to remain in the lower house of parliament.

Markuszower was also dropped as the prospective minister for asylum and migration, a key role for the PVV. That post will now go to another MP, Marjolein Faber, despite VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz openly questioning her suitability.

Yesilgöz’s comments triggered a crisis meeting last Friday afternoon, at the end of which Van Zwol said she remained a candidate.

Yesilgöz has not commented publicly since, but Pieter Omtzigt, leader of the NSC party, went on the record as saying he was satisfied that Faber would not rock the boat and she did not have to withdraw earlier comments.

Faber has called her fellow parliamentarians fake, belittled a 12-year-old climate campaigner in public and believes that climate change is cause by the sun’s activities. When Ahmed Marcouch got the job of mayor of Arnhem she and Wilders were photographed holding a banner saying: “No Arnhemmistan, we are losing our country”.

Faber herself said on Friday on social media that she would respect the coalition agreement and the rule of law.

Outspoken

Nevertheless, there is mounting unease among some members of the VVD about the tie-up with the far-right PVV, given the party’s ministerial appointees.

“I thought we had reached bottom with the coalition deal but now I look at the candidates, we’ve gone below that,” Enschede council executive Jeroen Diepemaat told the AD. “The VVD has accepted Mrs Faber, who throws the great replacement theory into the world. And Faber will soon have to put migration strategy into practice.”

A second controversial choice is Reinette Klever, the minister for foreign trade and development, who has said no money should go on development aid in the first place. The new coalition has already agreed to slash €2.4 billion, or two-thirds, from the aid budget.

Klever is one of the founders of a far-right broadcasting company that has been fined for fake news, defends blackface makeup as part of Dutch culture and has worn the “prinsenvlag”, the Dutch flag favoured by Dutch nazis, on her lapel during debates.