32 parties submitted candidate lists for parliamentary election next month

A total of 32 parties submitted a candidate list for the parliamentary elections in October. So-called omissions were found in 16 of these cases. These omissions can still be corrected over the next two days, according to the Electoral Council. On Friday at 5:00 p.m., the council will make a final decision on whether the candidate lists are valid and whether the parties can take part in the election on October 29.

Submitting candidate lists follows a strict procedure, which also requires signatures from all candidates. A missing or incorrect signature can result in an omission. The candidate list had to be submitted by Monday. On Friday, it will be announced which parties have submitted a valid list and who the parliamentary candidates are. All candidate lists will also be assigned a number for the ballot. This will take place after a public session of the Electoral Council.

The Electoral Council checks, among other things, whether parties have paid the deposit of 11,250 euros and whether enough declarations of support have been submitted for each electoral district. New or smaller parties must submit at least 30 declarations of support in each electoral district; established parties that already hold seats in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, are exempt from this requirement.

Among the parties that submitted a candidate list are well-known ones such as VVD, GroenLinks/PvdA, PVV, CDA, D66, BBB, ChristenUnie, NSC, Partij voor de Dieren, SP, and Volt. But there are also lesser-known ones like Vrede voor Dieren, De Linie, NL PLAN, ORDA, FNP, Vrij Verbond, and Partij voor de rechtsstaat.

The previous election in 2023 had a total of 26 parties with 1,126 candidates. A total of 29 parties submitted a candidate list for that election.

The record for the highest number of parties that submitted a candidate list for an election came in 2021, when 37 parties entered a candidate list.