Cabinet formation talks entering a critical phase, parties must make decisions

The four parties that have been trying to form a new coalition government for the past 24 weeks will continue talks again on Monday at 10 a.m. For the first time in nearly two weeks, the leaders of the PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB will sit with Richard van Zwol and Elbert Dijkgraaf, the moderators leading talks. This week will be "crucial," the two moderators previously indicated.

Last Friday, the budget proposals from the four parties were scored by the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), and the predicted impact of a slew of measures were sent to the party leaders. In the coming days, the four parties must exchange terms and "look for coherence" in a broad agreement.

Time is running out, as Van Zwol and Dijkgraaf must present a report on the latest round of talks by May 15. It will be a complicated puzzle, the two also indicated.

The VVD has often indicated that cuts should be considered to keep the treasury in order, while the PVV has many plans considered to be very expensive. European Union rules stipulate that the national deficit may not exceed 3 percent.

For the radical right-wing PVV, the most important thing is that measures are taken to curb immigration, Geert Wilders previously said. Otherwise, he thinks it would be pointless for him to bring his party into a Cabinet, and he would rather see voters return to the polls for new elections, he said on X.

After the last consultations in April, the moderators indicated that they were confident that the four parties can reach an agreement, but also made it clear that a number of "major issues" still need to be finalized by the parties. The Cabinet formation has been going on for more than five months.

If the PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB come to an agreement in the coming days, the extra-parliamentary Cabinet they want can then be formed. This could theoretically include Cabinet members who have more of an arms-length connection to daily politics compared to ministers who are generally selected because of their political experience.

This will then have to develop in a more concrete way. Previous Cabinet negotiations over the past five months have led to the prospect that a coalition between these four parties would need to be outlined in a looser, broad agreement as opposed to the complicated, set-in-stone coalition agreements more common in recent decades.