As tractor protests broke out last year over plans to slash nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands’ agricultural sector, one conspiracy theory suggested farmland was to be taken over to house asylum seekers. This was not true. But the rumours illustrated how easily anxieties over the green transition could be used to buttress a toxic and divisive political agenda. The opening was duly exploited by the veteran far‑right politician Geert Wilders, whose anti‑immigration Freedom party won most votes in last November’s election. Its platform included a pledge to leave the Paris agreement on climate change.
Thankfully, this commitment does not feature in the landmark coalition agreement Mr Wilders has just struck with three other conservative parties. Nor, after six months of tortured negotiations, do campaign promises to ban Islamic schools and mosques, and hold a referendum on leaving the EU. Reluctantly, Mr Wilders has also accepted that no coalition will be possible with him as prime minister, and the search for a viable candidate goes on. But the good news stops there.
At a time when radical-right parties are expanding their influence, and banking on major gains in June’s European elections, the Dutch coalition agreement paves the way for the most rightwing, insular government in the country’s postwar history. Having long established itself as a socially liberal (if fiscally hawkish) mainstay of EU moderation, the Netherlands appears to be heading for outlier territory.
On immigration and the green transition in particular, a Wilders-dominated government is set to be a significantly disruptive force as Europe attempts to coordinate targets and policy. While paying lip service to existing climate targets, the agreement abandons the strategic steps necessary to achieve them. The participation in the coalition of the Farmer-Citizen Movement has ensured U-turns on key green policies, such as the buyout of polluting farms and the reduction of livestock numbers. Subsidies on electric cars are to be scrapped from next year, taxes cut on diesel, and new investment channelled into fossil fuels.
On migration and asylum, the pact states that a disruptive opt-out from European common rules will be sought as a priority. Domestically, a temporary “asylum crisis” act is set to be introduced, allowing a draconian approach to applications, deportations and detentions. It will be, Mr Wilders has promised with grim relish, the “strictest ever” asylum policy introduced in the Netherlands.
Assuming a prime minister and cabinet can eventually be agreed upon – a process which may take further weeks, or even months – Mr Wilders will have achieved a radical reset of Dutch politics. Depressingly, he has been aided and abetted in this project by supposedly moderate conservatives. The coalition would not be viable without the participation of the outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte’s centrist VVD party.
No doubt the VVD leadership will have congratulated itself on reining in the far-right radicalism of a politician once prevented from entering Britain because of his Islamophobic views. The reality is that they are allowing his extremism to percolate through to the mainstream. Renew Europe, the grouping of European parties to which the liberal-conservative VVD belongs, will now vote in June on whether to expel it for breaching a collectively agreed cordon sanitaire. That would send out a useful message. But in the Netherlands, it would seem the damage has already been done.