Dilan Yesilgöz started her new role as party leader of the VVD with a remarkable opening to the PVV. While her predecessor Mark Rutte continued to systematically exclude Geert Wilders’ party after the collapse of his first cabinet, Yesilgöz said she would be willing to work with him in a new cabinet. Two months later and just under three weeks before the House of Representatives elections, she pushed the door closed again.
In the Radio 1 debate on Friday afternoon in Nieuwspoort, the outgoing Minister of Justice lashed out hard at the leader of the PVV. She said that Wilders uses tough language about asylum and migration, but does not come up with solutions. She particularly criticizes the (old) PVV proposal to close the borders to migration. “Closing borders is bad for companies and people,” Yesilgöz said. “You are destroying the country!” Wilders repeated the accusation: “You are destroying the country. You don’t handle criticism well, you get irritated.”
Yesilgöz still says he is not excluding “any voters”, but: “I have absolutely nothing with Mr Wilders, his program and what he is proclaiming here again today. Just shouting out one-liners will not move the country forward.”
These comments are not without significance: they reduce the chance of a new coalition on the right. Because, Yesilgöz concluded her tirade against Wilders: “It has been a long search for an agreement [met de PVV].”
Well-known positions
It was one of the few exciting moments in Radio 1’s traditional election debate, where for the first time in the campaign (almost) all party leaders debated each other. In an hour and a half – minus advertising breaks and news bulletins – the leaders of sixteen parties spoke, only Pieter Omtzigt of New Social Contract did not participate. A format in which it is difficult to turn it into a controversial debate. The largely new political leaders did not go much further than reciting their already known positions, such as on the war between Israel and Hamas and on social security.
In addition to Yesilgöz’s fierce lashing out against Wilders about migration, there was some heat in the debate when GroenLinks-PvdA party leader Frans Timmermans was attacked from two sides for his rejection of nuclear energy, by D66 party leader Rob Jetten and Caroline van der Plas of BBB. . Outgoing climate minister Jetten accuses the former European climate commissioner of not seeing the urgency of the climate problem as long as he excludes nuclear energy as an alternative source in the necessary energy transition. “We must achieve the climate goals without taboos.”
Timmermans seemed to offer a small opening to the hitherto persistent party position when he said that nuclear energy could provide a maximum of 10 percent of the Dutch energy supply. Jetten immediately wanted to do business: “Ten percent you say? Let’s do that!” But Timmermans continued to say that he had “no objections in principle” to nuclear energy, but practical ones. “It doesn’t add up (economically).”
For his attack on Timmermans, the D66 party leader received support from an unexpected source. From the back of the room of the Nieuwspoort society there suddenly sounded very loud and cheerful. “Yo, that Jetten is doing well!” The expression of support came from the new leader of the CDA, Henri Bontebal.