Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his three deputy prime ministers will discuss on Tuesday what the election defeat means for the government coalition. It is not about crisis consultations and the coalition is not in danger, he emphasizes on Thursday evening.
The foursome must interpret and analyze the major victory of the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) at the Ministry of General Affairs on Tuesday. Coalition parties VVD, D66, CDA and ChristenUnie lost heavily and BBB became the largest in all provinces. But Rutte also wants to discuss what lies behind “broader dissatisfaction in society”.
“So one is the result itself and also: what does that do to parties?” Rutte said after the first day of an EU summit in Brussels. “And two: what can we read in that result about the broader issue of dissatisfaction? Which I think is more than urban-rural. Nitrogen, but also many other subjects.”
The prime minister previously called BBB’s large profit a strong signal from the voter. He wants to find out how the cabinet should deal with this. It is not the case that a coalition party has asked to break open the coalition agreement, reports a spokesman for the Government Information Service. He expects more talks to follow.
The Prime Minister thinks it wise to discuss within the cabinet where the great support for Caroline van der Plas’s party comes from. According to researchers, voters are not only dissatisfied with the approach to the nitrogen problem, but also with other matters.
Debate on results will follow on April 4
Together with Deputy Prime Ministers Sigrid Kaag, Wopke Hoekstra and Carola Schouten, the Prime Minister and VVD leader can immediately prepare for a debate in the House of Representatives on 4 April. The debate, requested by GroenLinks, was initially blocked by the coalition factions, to the anger of the opposition. But they changed their minds a few hours later.
Two days after the elections, the Council of Ministers had already reflected on the loss. The result is also of national significance, because the new members of the Provincial Council elect the members of the Senate at the end of May. With probably seventeen seats, BBB will be the largest there.
According to the forecast, the four coalition parties will go from 32 to 22 seats. This means that the cabinet must get more senators from opposition parties behind it in order to get policy through. The cabinet will probably have to make more concessions for this.
