“I am not flawless,” says Dick Schoof, who is again ‘souffling’ by Geert Wilders

Dick Schoof is mistaken. Everyone’s purchasing power, he says, is “back”. In the room, from his bench, PVV leader Geert Wilders shouts: “Previous”. Shoves: “I said backwards? Sorry.”

Second Chamber President Martin Bosma laughs. “You are still being souffled by Mr. Wilders, isn’t it?”

Now everyone laughs, also moved. “That is not, chairman.”

It is the last general political considerations of Schoof, the partyless prime minister of a cabinet that fell twice. It was Wilders who asked him in the spring of 2024 to be prime minister, but then he immediately made it clear that he had little to say. Wilders behaved like the boss, shoved that happened.

And although the PVV left the cabinet in June of this year, it also continues to find it difficult to say something about Wilders in Thursday’s debate. The day before, on the first day of the general political reflections, he had a “gigantic immigrant problem in the Netherlands”, about “neighborhoods and cities” that were “inlamated”, and who said he wanted to ban Islamic education.

‘Cabinet discrimination i’

Stephan van Baarle calls Schoof “the Prime Minister of the Discrimination I, namely the cabinet with the PVV of Geert Wilders,” he believes that Schoof must “stand”. Laurens Dassen van Volt wants to know Van Schoof how he sees that “many Dutch people started to feel unsafe” through statements by Wilders and PVV people who were in the cabinet. According to GroenLinks-PvdA leader Frans Timmermans, the Prime Minister is “not silent” about the freedom of education in the Constitution, in Article 23.

I don’t speak to you as a Dick Schoof. I am attached to it to explicitly emphasize that

Schoof was his story in the Lower House, Thursday afternoon, just started with a plea against polarization. He was worried about that, he said. That was the moment when MPs had emerged: he had chosen to become prime minister of the first cabinet with a radical right -wing party in it. And he never wanted to respond to Wilders who took out online or in the Lower House to Muslims, Islam, asylum seekers.

Not even now. He says that he cannot “keep up with a big smile” that everything went well, “two parties had left his cabinet. And about himself: “I am not flawless, of course not.”

But he wants, he says, “as Prime Minister from a deep conviction” the Netherlands “keep” on the constitutional path. ” According to him, that constitution is “not up for discussion.” What Wilders had proposed, abolishing the freedom of education for Muslims, is “conflicting with it.” “Then you would,” he says, “should change the constitution.”

Think in processes

It almost sounds like a tip to Wilders and it fits in with the way of thinking that Schoof Type, according to people who have worked with him: if there is a problem, there must be a solution. Schoof is practical, he thinks in processes. A change in the constitution, he says in the debate with great emphasis, that is what the Second and the Senate themselves are about. That is not up to him.

Shove does not say that the seriously ill children from Gaza can still come to the Netherlands

There will be no moral judgment, as the MPs had asked for him. His answers lead to noise in the benches. Shove it hears, he says, “But this is actually correct.”

Around six o’clock, Schoof is irritated by Esther Ouwehand of the Party for the Animals, who calls him “nervous” when answering questions about Gaza. Schoof looks away, he thinks it is “bland.” Van Baarle van Denk then calls him “complicit” and “co -responsible” for the suffering in Gaza, “if you don’t do what you have to do, then you let it happen.” Shoves look at him with a tight face, arms over each other.

He had previously responded very differently to Frans Timmermans. Timmermans had started about the seriously ill and wounded children from Gaza who could be treated in Dutch hospitals. The cabinet does not want that and believes that this treatment in the Middle East itself should be done.

Timmermans had appealed to “as Dick Schoof”, with whom he had worked closely together as Minister of Foreign Affairs in one of the most difficult periods in our national history. ” He means: after the attack on the MH17, then it was still a top official. Timmermans had “got to know him as someone who holds on to international law and principles” and says that Schoof no longer has to “look away”.

Shoves back and forth, looks down. Then he says: “I am here as prime minister and not otherwise.” He also says: “I don’t speak to you as a Dick Schoof. I attach like it to explicitly emphasize that.” Otherwise it would be a “personal conversation”. “That is possible,” says Schoof. “But just when we’re together. Not here in the Lower House.”

In the evening, the medical evacuation of Gazan children will again vote. Not per group but per Member of Parliament. A week ago the result was still 72 against, 71 before. “It will be tight,” says Mirjam Bikker of the ChristenUnie. The result will depend on who is. She looks at: “Show your heart.”

He also looks at her, he nods. But he does not say that the children can still be helped in the Netherlands.

At half past ten in the evening, 74 MPs vote for the evacuations of sick children, 75 MPs vote against. It is canceled.

Supplement (18-09-25, 10.35 pm): This article was supplemented after the motion about the evacuation of children from Gaza was put to the Lower House.

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