Dutch far-right leader Wilders says 'time pressing' on government formation

[February 01, 2024]  AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Ten weeks after his resounding win in Dutch elections, far- right leader Geert Wilders said on Thursday that the task of forming a new government was not getting any easier.

Dutch far-right politician and leader of the PVV party Geert Wilders reacts as he meets the press as parties' lead candidates meet to begin coalition talks in The Hague, Netherlands, November 24, 2023. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw/File Photo

"Time is pressing and that is not necessarily making things easier," Wilders told reporters before heading into another round of meetings with his three prospective government partners.

Wilders' nationalist Freedom Party (PVV) was the clear winner of the Nov. 22 election, but with around a quarter of the total vote he needs partners to build a workable coalition.

Wilders has been negotiating with the centre-right VVD of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the centrist upstart NSC and the farmers' protest party BBB since late November.

These parties in December said they would first try to find common ground over the rule of law following serious doubts expressed by the VVD and NSC about working with Wilders, whose program had called for shutting down mosques and banning the Koran in the Netherlands.

Since then hardly any details of the negotiations have emerged, though the intermediary leading the talks, Ronald Plasterk, this week flagged finances as a key stumbling block.

Dutch central bank president Klaas Knot said on Sunday he had told the parties they would have to find around 17 billion euros ($18.4 billion) in structural spending cuts in order to keep state finances on a solid footing.

But Wilders made clear this was not part of his agenda, by tweeting his preference for a right-wing government "with lower taxes and without painful, large spending cuts".

Plasterk will deliver a report on the progress of the government formation talks to parliament by mid-February.

If the parties cannot agree on forming a government, other combinations of parties could be considered, with new elections as an option of last resort.

Government formation in the Netherlands traditionally takes a long time. Talks after the previous Dutch election in March 2021 took a record-breaking 299 days.

($1 = 0.9248 euros)

(Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Gareth Jones)

[© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.