By Andrew Hammond
The phrase ‘Double Dutch’ is sometimes defined as an unintelligible language. That phrase seems an apt description of the upcoming election in the Netherlands which is hugely difficult to decipher the result of.
This matters given the stakes in play in the ballot. For one, the Netherlands boasts the fifth-largest economy in the EU and is an influential player on the world stage in wide-ranging policy debates.
For instance, the Netherlands was the first non-G7 country to negotiate bilateral security commitments with Ukraine. It took the lead last summer along with Denmark, in moving toward donating F-16 fighter aircraft to Kyiv and setting up a training center in Europe.
The election is also important as it may well give a good indication of the bloc’s political mood going into next year’s big European Parliament election year. Other recent elections have shown a rightward drift across the continent, although last month’s Polish vote saw Donald Tusk’s centrist coalition potentially winning power.
The Nov. 22 Dutch ballot is taking place in the aftermath of the collapse of the fourth coalition government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the EU’s second longest-serving leader after Hungary’s Viktor Orban. This is leaving a political vacuum with Rutte potentially moving to a big international job, possibly as the next NATO military alliance secretary general.
The context too is that of the recent history of the Netherlands of the rise of the far right. Today, it is the Freedom Party of political maverick Geert Wilders that tends to get most media coverage on the political far right. It is plausible that Wilders could become a coalition kingmaker if there is a big swing to conservative and anti-establishment parties as some polls indicate.
In this context, there has been much Dutch political volatility in recent years which was most recently showcased by the success of the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB). Formed in 2020, the pro-farmer BBB topped the Dutch provincial elections in March, yet its forecast vote share has since fallen from over 20 percent to well below 10 percent.
Driving this political turbulence is the collapse of the Dutch political center ground, as has been the case in several other European polities. Parties of the center-right and left have seen their vote share fall off a cliff to around 40 percent today from double that figure in the 1980s.
The latest signal of the volatility that this political vacuum has left is that a brand new, three-month-old party, the New Social Contract (NSC), has topped some recent opinion polls. The spectacular rise of the NSC reflects popular discontent with a series of government scandals, including one exposed by NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt who left Rutte’s last Government in 2021 after helping expose a welfare policy failure that brought down the administration.
This anti-government sentiment has also helped turn the political agenda in a more populist direction. One example is fiscal policy.
The Dutch are traditionally known in Europe for their fiscal caution, yet the current Rutte coalition has overseen the most expansionary set of policies in modern Dutch history. Moreover, the election manifesto plans of the key parties point to the likelihood of a continued, expansionary fiscal policy continuing the trajectory of the outgoing coalition.
Another good example is the green transition, and who will pay for it, in a nation that is the world’s second-largest agricultural exporter. One specific issue that has surfaced during the campaign is nitrogen emissions. Under a Dutch law introduced by Rutte, nitrogen emissions have to be reduced by 50 percent by 2035, a deadline which he has proposed to bring forward to 2030.
Farmers, a powerful political bloc as the BBB underlined earlier this year, have expressed concerns as livestock manure and chemical fertilizers are big emitters. The politics of this issue has forced even former European Commission Green Deal and climate chief, Franz Timmermans, onto the defensive. Currently, the leader of the Green-Left bloc, Timmermans has recently made a big U-turn on this issue.
This is politically embarrassing for the former EU commissioner who is campaigning on a pro-green agenda. His platform includes plans to reduce Dutch greenhouse gas emissions by 65 percent by 2030, significantly beyond the 55 percent EU target.
Within this cauldron of discontent, the outcome of the election is genuinely highly uncertain. Three main party blocs — the NSC; Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy now led by Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius; and Timmerman’s Green-Labour alliance, are seeking a breakthrough.
However, this is complicated by the Dutch proportional voting system which means that the Netherlands has only seen coalition Governments for over 100 years. No party may win more than 20 percent of the vote or 30 of 150 seats.
The other key consequence of this hyper-fragmentation is that the eventual coalition may take months to form. Rutte’s last coalition time took a remarkable 271 days and this means he may have to remain caretaker prime minister well into next year.
Taken together, the Dutch election is therefore one of the most unpredictable elections in the nation’s recent politically volatile history. One risk is that a weak government ultimately emerges that turns the traditionally outward-looking country, more inward, at a time of growing geopolitical tension.
Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics
Why world is watching Europe's last big election of 2023
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20.11.2023
By Andrew Hammond The phrase ‘Double Dutch’ is sometimes defined as an unintelligible language. That phrase seems an apt description of the upcoming election in the Netherlands which is hugely difficult to decipher the result of.
This matters given the stakes in play in the ballot. For one, the Netherlands boasts the fifth-largest economy in the EU and is an influential player on the world stage in wide-ranging policy debates.
For instance, the Netherlands was the first non-G7 country to negotiate bilateral security commitments with Ukraine. It took the lead last summer along with Denmark, in moving toward donating F-16 fighter aircraft to Kyiv and setting up a training center in Europe.
The election is also important as it may well give a good indication of the bloc’s political mood going into next year’s big European Parliament election year. Other recent elections have shown a rightward drift across the continent, although last month’s Polish vote saw Donald Tusk’s centrist coalition potentially winning power.
The Nov. 22 Dutch ballot is taking place in the aftermath of the collapse of the fourth coalition government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the EU’s second longest-serving leader after Hungary’s Viktor Orban. This is leaving a political vacuum with Rutte potentially moving to a big international job, possibly as the next NATO military........
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