VVD member Eric van der Burg, Secretary of State for Asylum, cried. Standing in the hall of the Ministry of General Affairs just before midnight on Friday, he started talking about “the people in the asylum seekers’ centres, the churches, the municipalities and the provinces who all work so hard, and to whom I had promised that an asylum deal would come.” The deal had failed that evening, and the Rutte IV cabinet had fallen.
Just before him, CDA leader Wopke Hoekstra had been standing in the hall to talk to journalists: irritated. He found the cabinet fall “unnecessary” and “inexplicable to the people of the country”. And Minister for Poverty Reduction Carola Schouten of the ChristenUnie had also been there. Visibly dejected. She spoke in a soft voice about “the values” of the different parties in Rutte IV, how different they were when it came to asylum, and that it was therefore impossible to come up with measures against the arrival of large numbers of asylum seekers.
Crisis consultation
During the crisis consultations of the cabinet, the partners and minor children of war refugees had been discussed for days, and under what conditions they would be allowed to come to the Netherlands. The VVD in particular, with the support of the CDA, wanted family reunification to be severely limited. And especially the ChristenUnie, supported by D66, had nothing to do with it.
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State Secretary Eric van der Burg had been working all Friday before the consultation on a compromise that was called ‘the pause button’ in the coalition of Rutte IV: only in times of many new asylum seekers would war refugees have to wait a while before their families were allowed to come over. It was not yet clear what exactly ‘a lot’ was. Nor how long they had to wait. There was talk of maybe six months.
Van der Burg was optimistic about it, his party and also the CDA and D66 expected that they could work it out. But Carola Schouten and her co-negotiator Maarten van Ooijen, State Secretary for Youth Care, came to the meeting with a completely different mind, Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. The parliamentary party of the ChristenUnie, they knew, would not accept any kind of ‘compromise’ if it meant restricting family reunification.
Schouten and Van Ooijen told their message at the table in the ministry. Talks went on until 8:00 PM. There was also food: Indian. The ministers and state secretaries sometimes split up into small groups, then they sat together again. Dilan Yesilgöz, Minister of Justice, with Mark Rutte. Wopke Hoekstra and Hugo de Jonge, Minister for Housing, and D66 leader Sigrid Kaag. And also, fifteen minutes before the cabinet fell, Carola Schouten and Wopke Hoekstra.
According to those involved, CDA and D66 were prepared to help colleagues from the ChristenUnie and then come up with a different plan, but the VVD held on to the idea that something had to be changed about family reunification anyway. In the end it was Mark Rutte, now outgoing prime minister, who determined that they could not find a solution.
Ruth tired
In his press conference on Friday evening, Rutte made a tired impression, he spoke with great emphasis on every word and called the fall of his cabinet “very regrettable”. On television, CDA party chairman Pieter Heerma had already called him “irresponsibly hard” and “almost reckless” because Rutte had threatened D66 and the ChristenUnie with a cabinet fall if they did not agree with the VVD demand on family reunification during the negotiations on Wednesday evening.
Rutte thought that, he said in his press conference, was nonsense. He could have said it “kinder”, but according to him it was certainly not because of that that the cabinet had fallen. D66 party chairman Jan Paternotte supported Pieter Heerma later in the evening: according to him, Rutte had sharpened the negotiations with his behavior on Wednesday.
Follow our blog the latest developments surrounding the fall of the cabinet
Rutte, VVD members also saw that, had made it difficult for himself in recent months by promising that he would do everything possible to limit asylum. And especially because of his promise, at the VVD congress in June, that the cabinet would come up with measures before the summer. In doing so, he imposed a deadline on himself, which Rutte had always avoided as much as possible in his long career in politics. Because, he told those around him, you almost always regretted that. According to him, if it was not really necessary, you should avoid it as much as possible.
Now the VVD suddenly had a deadline. “It is not the case that we wanted it so badly,” said Carola Schouten on Friday evening. “But if there are people who want to, we will play the game together. And I was a little surprised how it went on Wednesday.” She meant Rutte’s tough attitude, who clearly felt the pressure of his supporters: they wanted to keep him to his promise.
“But you talk about that,” said Carola Schouten, “again with each other.” That was on Thursday. It just didn’t change anything.
Chagrin at Hoekstra
After the fall of the cabinet, all party leaders also realized that the Netherlands was not making much progress. That was exactly why Wopke Hoekstra was so grumpy. He said: “Some of the other big problems out there will get bigger instead of smaller.” But when asked what the fall of Rutte IV meant for the farmers, he said: “We are now talking about a different subject.”
None of the three party leaders in the cabinet wanted to look ahead and say whether they wanted to become party leaders again. Rutte said what he always says, although it did not sound enthusiastic in any way. “If you asked me now, I would say yes. I still have the energy and the ideas. But I still have to think about it.”
On Monday, the House of Representatives will return from the summer recess for a debate on the end of Rutte IV.