Members of the PvdA and GroenLinks voted for a joint Senate faction on Saturday. At the PvdA party congress in Nieuwegein, 76.8 percent of those present opted for more intensive cooperation after the elections. In the GroenLinks online referendum, this was 80 percent. The PvdA even adopted a motion for a joint list with GroenLinks, even before the elections. The party board had only supported the idea of a joint faction and advised against a PvdA-GroenLinks list.
According to the party board, it is practically difficult to form a single list now, but party chairman Esther-Mirjam Sent promised the audience that she “will make every effort to carry out the most far-reaching motion”.
Party chairman of GroenLinks Katinka Eikelenboom wrote in a first reaction even though a referendum within the party has never had such a high turnout – “a very strong mandate”. “After years of talking about left-wing cooperation, we are now confidently taking the next step together. On to a left-wing future.”
Combining forces
The proposal to become “a strong left-wing bloc” after the elections to the Senate, PvdA chairman Esther-Mirjam Sent already announced at the end of last month. They wrote that the party board wants to form a single faction in a newly elected senate with the senators PvdA and GroenLinks, in order to “turn the balance in politics”. With the proposal, the party leadership expressed its first explicit opinion about cooperation with GroenLinks.
Party leaders of both parties argued at the end of May in an opinion piece in de Volkskrant also for ‘joining forces’ in the Senate. “The Netherlands cannot afford more years of right-wing power and left-wing division,” they wrote. Thirty-two politicians, including former leaders of the PvdA Diederik Samsom, Wouter Bos and Job Cohen, and former leaders of GroenLinks Bram van Ojik and Jolande Sap, endorsed the call.
More intensive cooperation, or even a merger, between the PvdA and GroenLinks has been discussed for years, but after the parties were jointly excluded from the cabinet formation, the discussion has become more serious and concrete in tone. At the end of May, a total of 300 members of the two sides gathered to discuss “the future of the left, and how cooperation fits into it”. There was no mention of a merger, the ‘F-word’, but there was talk of forming ‘one front’. Opponents of a merger have also opposed cooperation in the Senate in recent weeks.
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