MP’s who ditched Wilders to meet coalition talks leader; PVV row dominates newspapers
Tuesday’s bombshell of seven PVV parliamentarians suddenly leaving Geert Wilders’ far-right party to form their own faction dominated the Dutch newspapers on Wednesday. The main question on everyone’s mind is what this will mean for the coalition formation. The PVV defectors already emailed Rianne Letschert, who is currently leading the formation process, asking for a meeting.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that the formation process is suddenly turned on its head. D66, VVD, and CDA are rapidly moving towards presenting a coalition agreement for a minority Cabinet on January 30, and hope to have the new Cabinet sworn in by February 26.
But the split-off party, which will likely be called Nederlandse Vrijheids Alliantie (NVA), led by Gidi Markuszower, has instantly become a significant force in parliament with enough seats to help the minority Cabinet almost all the way to a majority vote. With seven MPs, the new party is the same size as the FvD and larger than the BBB, DENK, SGP, PvdD, ChristenUnie, SP, 50Plus, and Volt.
In the letter Markuszower sent to Wilders on Tuesday, announcing the seven MPs' departure, he said that they had wanted the PVV to be a “constructive opposition” party. “The country is ready for solutions, not just criticism. This also includes cooperation with parties that want the same thing for the Netherlands as we do, on numerous issues.”
“It’s precisely with a minority government that we can do business,” Markuszower wrote. The new party holds many of the same far-right views as the PVV. The parliamentarians still have an issue with Islam, for example. But they believe the people of the Netherlands have more important issues that need to be addressed.
For a minority Cabinet that will only hold 66 of the 150 seats in parliament and will desperately need all the help it can get, that is a valuable position. But whether they can find common ground remains to be seen.
D66 leader Rob Jetten has always been very reluctant about working with the far-right. In 2024, he called it a worrying trend that more and more conservative parties were “willing to help extreme politicians into power.” He said: “History teaches us: whoever collaborates with the far right will ultimately be swallowed by them.”
On Tuesday, Jetten said he would wait to see what “substantive course” the new party would take. But he added: “A new party that wants to collaborate constructively offers opportunities.”
VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz, whose party worked with the PVV in the collapsed Schoof I Cabinet and seemed to lean increasingly right in the past year, was more enthusiastic about the outstretched hand. “If they believe it benefits the country, they may be willing to back it,” she said.
