–Outcome Significantly Weakens The Hand Of Euro-Sceptic Parties

AMSTERDAM (MNI) – The Netherlands’ liberal party VVD, lead by
caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte, has won the Dutch national
elections, according to the preliminary vote count.

Final results will be released Monday.

The center-right VVD won 41 seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament.
The center-left Labour party PvdA, led by former Greenpeace activist
Diederik Samsom, came in a very close second with 39 seats. VVD thus
gains 10 seats in the parliament, its best showing ever. PvdA will have
nine more seats in the new parliament than in the current one.

Negotiations for a new government will start today.

Because the number of seats needed to form a parliamentary majority
is 76, the VVD and PvdA could govern together in a two-party coalition.
Both parties have been attacking each other fiercely during the
campaign, successfully targeting undecided voters.

The irony: VVD won a lot of strategic votes from people who only
supported it as a means of blocking PvdA. And the reverse is also true.
Now the two parties are doomed to cooperate in the next government.

The outcome also makes it very likely that the next government of
the Netherlands will maintain a reluctant but pro-Europe course
supporting the austerity policies championed by Germany. Rutte, the
prime minister and VVD leader, has harshly criticized European rescue
operations for banks and for peripheral Eurozone governments, and he has
spoken out against further European political integration. But he is
expected to prove less anti-European once he is back in power.

In a major upset in Dutch politics, other parties will now be too
small to allow the possibility of either a left-wing or right-wing
government – unless the VVD is willing to repeat its failed cooperation
with the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), which supported the minority
government of Liberals and Christian-democrats (CDA) that fell this
spring.

Even then, VVD and PVV would need the cooperation of at least two
other parties, none of them being very eager to join hands with the
Freedom Party’s firebrand anti-immigrant leader Geert Wilders. Labour
could conceivably get a small majority in combination with all of the
six parties that have left-leaning sentiments.

It is possible that the small social-liberal D66 party, also a
winner with 12 seats, could join with the two top parties in what would
be a repeat of the so-called “Purple Coalition” that governed the
Netherlands from 1994-2002. VVD and PvdA together have 80 seats, enough
to govern. But cooperation with other parties would be desirable in
order to get a majority in the upper house of parliament, which might
otherwise block legislation by the new government.

Another possible partner would be the Christian-democrats, CDA.
Although they had another disastrous election result, they might still
opt for joining the government. However, after their second big election
defeat in a row, that might not be a viable option.

The euro-sceptic Socialist party (SP) will have 15 seats in the new
parliament, according to the preliminary results. Wilders’ Freedom
Party, also staunchly anti-Europe, will get 15 seats as well, down 9
from the current parliament.

Voter turnout in the election was about 74 per cent, slightly less
then the last elections in 2010.

Samsom’s Labour Party had made a strong, surprising comeback in the
last two weeks of the campaign, closing a big gap with VVD. Only one
month ago Labour had been expected to take only 20 seats, ten less than
in the current parliament and 19 less than what it will get following
Wednesday’s vote.

The socialists, who had been riding high in the opinion polls,
moved in the opposite direction, declining sharply in the weeks leading
up to the election. The socialists’ 15 seats is less than half the 34
seats that they had been expected to win a month before the election.

The sharp drop in support for Wilders’ Freedom Party, which put
strong anti-Europe pressure on Rutte’s government, should make it much
less of a factor in the new parliament.

VVD and Labour were also the biggest parties in the 2010 elections,
which Rutte’s party won with a razor thin margin of one seat. The two
parties failed to come to an agreement in 2010. Instead VVD formed a
minority coalition with the Christian-democratic CDA, and with the
support from the Freedom Party.

That minority government fell last spring after it was unable to
agree on the spending cuts and tax increases needed to reduce the Dutch
budget deficit to the EU’s 3%-of-GDP limit by 2013. Shortly after the
government fell, an ad hoc majority of five parties, including VVD but
excluding PvdA, was able to agree on the necessary cuts.

According to eminent Dutch economist Bas Jacobs, only three Dutch
parties have an electoral programme that is fully consistent with the
long-term survival of the Eurozone: Labour, the Greens, and D66. But
together, they would not have a majority.

Rutte’s VVD opposes a European banking union and is against
transferring more sovereignty to Brussels. However, it is expected that
the liberals will take a softer stance in the new government. The
Socialists and the Freedom Party are the most anti-Europe parties.

The result of the elections are being hailed in the Netherlands and
internationally as a defeat of the euro-sceptics. They can also be
interpreted as a flight to the safety of the middle. The strong results
for centre-left PvdA and centre-right VVD were unexpected and seem to
have ended – at least for the moment – the ongoing fragmentation of
Dutch politics, in which a lot of votes had gone to populist parties on
the left and the right. The last time the VVD and PvdA had a majority
together was in 2003.

Although the Liberals and Labour must cooperate, the formation of a
new government might not be easy, because both parties will be trying to
capitalise on their big wins. Although they more or less agree on Europe
and the euro, in national affairs they differ on most issues, including
taxes, pensions, health care and the housing market, which is in a major
slump that is dragging down the Dutch economy.

Political commentators expect either very quick coalition talks
with agreements on the main issues, or negotiations that drag on for a
long time, resulting in a very detailed agreement.

[TOPICS: M$X$$$,MGX$$$,M$$CR$]