The VVD faction in the House of Representatives has sent Mark Rutte out with an assignment: he must do his best to limit the arrival of large numbers of asylum seekers to the Netherlands. In exchange, the MPs of the VVD accept that there will be a law that will force municipalities to receive asylum seekers. The day before, they were still vehemently against it.
It is unclear what exactly Rutte will do. And also why just the Prime Minister’s promise to commit was enough for the faction to change its position. Tuesday’s crisis meeting in the House of Representatives, which lasted several hours, seemed primarily intended for the aldermen, local party leaders and councilors of the VVD, who have been worried and angry for months about the law of their party colleague, State Secretary for Asylum Eric van der Burg. The VVD members in The Hague showed that they take these concerns seriously and that they were prepared to face a near crisis. In any case, this now seems to have weakened the position of group chairman Sophie Hermans: Rutte was needed to change her group’s mind.
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Photo Bart Maat/ANP
Rutte himself received a lesson in humility from the MPs. He had to get out of his Torentje to hear their objections to the law, but was not allowed to enter the meeting right away. He waited in a small room until he was called. After that, he later said with a serious face, he had mainly listened to the ‘great concern’ of the MPs about ‘the high influx of asylum seekers’. “It’s too high.”
Difficult compromise
The law to distribute asylum seekers more fairly among municipalities is part of a difficult compromise, just after the summer, between the four coalition parties of Rutte IV. It was unmentionable for the ChristenUnie and D66 that that deal was adjusted to accommodate the VVD. But that party is having a hard time: angry party members threaten an uprising at the VVD congress on 19 November.
Why did the VVD put its heels in the sand right now? Four questions about the asylum law
The opposition in the VVD faction could have resulted in the fall of Rutte IV, the corridor at the VVD in the House of Representatives was filled with journalists for hours. But it did not come to that: Sophie Hermans said after the meeting that the group had had “a spicy conversation” with Mark Rutte. That he had been ‘sawn’ and that ‘his answers’ had given the MPs ‘sufficient confidence’. She didn’t want to say more about it, that was ‘confidential’.
It is enough for the faction, but with so much vagueness, will that also apply to its own supporters, and to the VVD members in municipalities? Klassiek Liberaal, a conservative platform in the VVD, reacted immediately: the party had “gone through the pump again”. “This would have been the moment to say: we cannot accept this, enough is enough.”
VVD member Paul Slettenhaar, also an alderman in Castricum, says that he “does not understand it at all”. “First the group was against, now they are for it. And nothing has changed at all.” Slettenhaar does not find the law a solution to the reception problems. “It is only about managing the short term, there is no vision of the structural problems behind it. You are not going to solve anything with it as long as the influx is so high.”
Slettenhaar, he says, had at least expected that Rutte would have made clear commitments to the VVD group to reduce the numbers of asylum seekers. “To support such a controversial law, you want the cabinet to look at specific points. That you are not just brainstorming a bit.”
Don’t go away
Such was the outcome of a day of impending crisis in The Hague: Rutte IV’s coalition remains intact, Van der Burg gets the law that he had promised the House of Representatives much earlier. But the anger has not gone away among the VVD members outside The Hague – at the party congress, members can still speak out against the law in a motion, which could cause further problems for the coalition.
This fits in with a trend: the top of the VVD seems to be losing its grip on its own party. In the spring, members of a congress adopted a motion rejecting the nitrogen plans of their own minister, Christianne van der Wal. And against the wishes of the VVD top, the members chose Eric Wetzels as party chairman, and not the nominated candidate Onno Hoes.
At the party congress in a week and a half, the VVD eyes in the hall will almost certainly be completely focused on Rutte: he has homework, what will become of it? At the party congress in the spring, with the nitrogen motion, he did not interfere in the discussion, which led to strong emotions in the hall. Now he will almost certainly have to prove his leadership.
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The coalition is told that Rutte may try to make the government’s asylum policy stricter, together with the CDA, which is making migration an increasingly important theme. But the ChristenUnie also has a following that is making itself heard more and more often, and that party will soon have a party congress.
The ChristenUnie and D66 emphasized on Tuesday that no new agreements have been made about limiting the numbers of asylum seekers, and that the VVD’s support for the law is the “essential breakthrough”, and nothing else.
Dotting the i
On Tuesday evening, the party leaders of VVD, CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie met at Eric van der Burg’s ministry to discuss the “dotting the i” of the law. A law that is now supported by the entire coalition. Afterwards, an “extremely relieved” Van der Burg was finally able to announce that his law had succeeded, so that asylum seekers can be distributed among the municipalities. “This should have happened sooner. You got my chagrin about that,” said the minister with a broad grin.
Van der Burg said that he had sometimes been disappointed by the opposition in the VVD group in recent weeks. “Then I was like: come on now, we have to face it.” He understood, he said, that his party wants to reduce the number of asylum seekers, but also warned that this is “very difficult to achieve”. “I’ve been working on it for ten months.”
Van der Burg will defend his law at the VVD congress on 19 November. “I have many friends in the party who often agree with me, but sometimes strongly disagree. Fortunately, that is possible at a club like the VVD.”