PvdA and GroenLinks team up in coalition talks

PvdA and GroenLinks plan to enter the Cabinet formation talks together as one team, party leaders Lilianne Ploumen ad Jesse Klaver reported on Friday. The party leaders discussed on Friday strengthening the ties between the two parties.

The two parties, accounting together for 17 parliamentary seats, already announced before the parliamentary elections March that they would work together. The move is a “logical step” Ploumen said. “After the election, the cooperation between our groups became closer”, GroenLinks leader, Jesse Klaver, said.

Leader of D66, Sigrid Kaag, said, according to NOS that she sees the move as a step in the right direction, “In a continuously more fractured political landscape is this collaboration a nice signal that it can be different.”

The cooperation between the PvdA and GroenLinks will not change the VVD’s standpoint that they do not want to form a Cabinet together with both parties. Prime Minister Mark Rutte has stated in the past he does not wish to form a new Cabinet with five parties. “What other parties do is on them but we will not change our position”, a VVD spokesperson told NOS.

It was not yet clear if the closer cooperation is the prelude to a definitive merger of the parliamentary groups or even a merger between the parties. “We are on new territory”, Ploumen said. The choice to merge is not up to the leaders but to the entire party, according to Klaver.

On Monday, the coalition talks will continue.