Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte does not have to leave the Torentje immediately. The opposition parties withdraw an announced motion of no confidence against him. This allows Rutte to stay in office until the elections and the arrival of a new cabinet.
PVV leader Geert Wilders and GL leader Jesse Klaver say in the debate on the fall of the cabinet on Monday that they will no longer submit a motion of no confidence against Rutte. If this motion had received support – including from MPs from D66, CDA or CU – Rutte should have left the Torentje immediately. At the start of the debate, Rutte announced that he would not become VVD party leader again.
“I am glad that no motion has come about, that he has drawn the conclusion himself,” says Klaver. For PvdA leader Attje Kuiken, ‘the political sting is out’ now that Rutte has announced his departure. “This creates space and air to do what is necessary for the Netherlands in the coming weeks and months.”
The opposition parties are full of praise for Rutte’s decision. “We have worked well together,” PVV leader Wilders told Rutte. “After that we constantly put each other on fire. But I would also like to thank the Prime Minister, Mark, for his unbridled commitment to the Netherlands. Your choices were not ours, but you made them with conviction, and that deserves a lot of respect.”
D66 party chairman Jan Paternotte denies to De Telegraaf that his party would have intended to support the motion of no confidence. Among the D66 supporters, the call for this to be done sounded increasingly louder on Sunday. “I think it is very logical that this motion has been withdrawn,” says Paternotte now. Also according to CDA party leader Pieter Heerma, the motion of no confidence against Rutte is ‘now off the table’. Heerma – who also announces that he will also leave politics – has ‘great respect’ for Rutte, but believes that he ‘did not make adjustments at crucial moments’.
Hermans bombarded
The House of Representatives will debate the end of the Rutte IV cabinet last Friday on Monday. After a week of crisis, the coalition parties (VVD, D66, CDA, CU) could not agree among themselves on measures against the high influx of asylum seekers, especially VVD and CU were diametrically opposed. In the debate, VVD party chairperson Sophie Hermans is given a hard beating by the opposition parties. They accuse the VVD of Rutte dropping the cabinet for party political reasons. “We were not looking at a political crisis in the cabinet, but at the start of the VVD election campaign,” sneered SP leader Lilian Marijnissen. VVD member Hermans firmly denies that the breakup of her party was all about a political game or campaign tricks. She thinks it’s ‘ugly to put it away like that’.
Bij1 Member of Parliament Sylvana Simons wants to know from Hermans how many family members of asylum seekers should not have come to the Netherlands in her opinion. The coalition parties pulled the plug on the issue of family reunification. According to Simons, this would concern 5,500 children. “The VVD is letting the cabinet fall over the backs of 5,500 children, with all the consequences that entails,” she says. D66 member Paternotte says he does not understand that the VVD has stopped negotiations on a migration package.
Compulsory law in refrigerator
Hermans says in the debate that she ‘deems the chance small’ that the distribution law of outgoing State Secretary Eric van der Burg (VVD) is still being discussed. With this distribution law – also known as the compulsory law – the government wanted to spread asylum seekers better across the country. Municipalities that do not cooperate would be forced to take in people. The treatment of the law will probably be declared ‘controversial’, which means that nothing will happen to it at least until the arrival of a new cabinet.