(The Hague) Four parties on Monday reached an agreement to form a government coalition in the Netherlands that will allow Prime Minister Mark Rutte to serve a fourth term, ending nearly nine months of negotiations.
The center-right VVD of the outgoing head of government, the center-left D66, the center-right CDA and Christen Unie (conservatives) have reached a text of agreement which will be presented to parliament on Wednesday.
“The text was accepted,” said a spokesperson for Johan Remkes and Wouter Koolmees, who oversaw the negotiations, as quoted by the ANP news agency. NOS and RTL TV channels also announced the deal.
The negotiations, which began after the general elections in mid-March, lasted 271 days, a new record for the Netherlands after 225 days without a government in 2017, but still far from the Belgian record of 541 days without a government in office.
“It’s a good deal,” Rutte told reporters after the talks, while declining to give more details.
Sigrid Kaag, whose D66 party won the second most seats in the March 17 elections, added that it was a “nice and balanced deal”.
Mark Rutte, Prime Minister since October 2010, has resigned since January because of a scandal linked to family allowances, but continues to manage day-to-day affairs.
He was not disowned by the voters in the legislative elections in March, won hands down by his VVD party, despite a year marked in particular by a motion of no confidence which he barely survived.
This ability to emerge unscathed from political crises has earned it the nickname “Teflon”.
With this fourth mandate, Mark Rutte will become one of the leaders in Europe for the longest time, after the Hungarian Viktor Orban who took office in May 2010, but will remain however far from the 16 years of Angela Merkel at the head of Germany.
Government in January
The parties in the new coalition will now present the deal to their parliamentary group on Tuesday, and then it will be debated in parliament on Wednesday.
The Netherlands, faced with a new epidemic wave that has led to unpopular restrictive measures, will however have to wait until January to find out about their new government, while the coalition divides up the ministries.
Among the expected political announcements, the future coalition is expected to announce an extension of free childcare, billions of euros of investments to fight against climate change, the lack of housing and research on nuclear energy as well as the establishment of road tolls, according to NOS.
Sigrid Kaag, the leader of the D66 party who came second in the elections, is due to be returned to the Foreign Ministry, according to media reports.
Appointed to the post in May, she resigned in August after being criticized by parliament for the chaotic handling of the evacuation from Afghanistan and for not seeing signs of an imminent takeover of the country by the Afghan forces. Taliban.
The current Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge, the public face of the fight against COVID-19 in the Netherlands, should not, however, be renewed, and his press briefing on Tuesday alongside Mark Rutte should be his last to this post.
The country has been rocked this year by violent riots in response to health measures taken by the government to curb the surge in the number of COVID-19 cases.
These measures include a curfew from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. (except for essential stores) and a limitation on the number of home visits.
The Netherlands has recorded more than 2.7 million cases of COVID-19 since the start of the epidemic, with more than 19,700 deaths, out of a population of 17 million.