Still no Cabinet; "Significant" differences in opinion, Omtzigt says

Another day of negotiations hasn’t resulted in a Cabinet with the PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB. According to Pieter Omtzigt (NSC), there are still “significant differences of opinions” on “several themes” between the four parties negotiating a new Cabinet. He did not want to say on Wednesday where the problems lie.

The party leaders of the PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB will continue to negotiate in the coming days, but time is running out. The formation leaders have until next week to reach an agreement. They must submit their final report to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, on May 15.

A tired Omtzigt thinks it is possible to bridge the differences and conclude the negotiations before May 15. “Of course, it would have been more fun if we had been done today.”

PVV leader Geert Wilders expects that the parties can reach an agreement, he said on Wednesday. I think it is possible. It just takes a while.” According to Caroline van der Plas (BBB), the negotiators “just need a little more time to explain some things.”

The four parties have been discussing the formation of a right-wing Cabinet for over five months. Whether the four of them will reach an agreement may remain uncertain until May 15, formation leaders Elbert Dijkgraaf and Richard Zwol said. According to Dijkgraaf, the formation can “certainly” still fail. “There are difficult hurdles that we have to overcome, and we’ll have to wait and see if we can overcome them.”

The parties want to make it work, he said after the third long day of negotiations. “I play it sometimes,” said Dijkgraaf. “If you spend so long and so intensively together, you would have pulled the plug at some point. And here have been plenty of those moments.”

According to Van Zwol, the significant differences of opinions that Omtzigt talked about are not new differences of opinion. “The four parties at the table have different views. Over time, the views have really converged, but some of the existing differences still exist.”

The formation leaders also did not want to say in which areas the parties disagreed.

According to Van Zwol, there is no one party who is finding it more difficult to make the leap. “I think that it will, of course, remain stressful for all four in a certain sense. You notice that. They are all people who have been here in this process for a long time, are working hard on it, have their own factions, the expectations of the voters, the outside world.”

“The necessary work” will be done on Thursday, but there will be no joint negotiations. “That is also necessary because a lot has changed in recent days. So let’s count the knots, consult with those and those. And then we will continue full speed again on Friday.”

If the four parties reach an agreement, their ‘outline program’ will be a lot shorter than a traditional coalition agreement, but it will also be “very concrete” on a number of measures, Van Zwol said. “You cannot talk about important topics like social security and housing in vague terms. So short can also mean concrete.”