Ministerial candidate Faber's promise to respect the rule of law reassures Omtzigt

NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt is reassured by the promise of ministerial candidate Marjolein Faber (PVV) to stay "within the lines of the framework agreement and the declaration on the rule of law." "That's a very good sentence, it reassures me," said Omtzigt on Saturday in Nieuwsuur. Furthermore, he did not demand that the designated asylum and migration minister take back statements from the past, such as the controversial term "repopulation" that she used.

"We will not force anyone to retract statements," said Omtzigt. He assumed that all ministers would adhere to the agreements in the framework agreement and in the declaration in which all four coalition parties agreed to respect the rule of law.

When asked whether new statements about the "repopulation theory" crossed a line for him, Omtzigt replied: "Those are not the things I want to hear, you saw that." However, he did not want to say in advance that he would want to send a minister away in such a case. He added that the parties have agreed that they will "take tough action against anti-Semitism, racism and hatred of Muslims."

Theories about "repopulation" state that an "elite" wants to deliberately replace the population with migrants. "The idea of repopulation is not only discriminatory but in more and more cases calls for violence," explained the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam recently. The institute calls it a "radical conspiracy theory."

Omtzigt said that such a theory "does not fit in any way" with the agreements that PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB have made. He will check whether ministers adhere to this "daily." "I also did that when people from the party I was in did not adhere to the law," he said about his past as a member of the CDA.