The final results for Amsterdam's municipal elections are in. GroenLinks is the biggest party in the city, with 10 city council seats. And four parties will enter the Amsterdam city council for the first time - newcomers DENK, Bij1 and FVD, and ChristenUnie, AT5 and Het Parool report.
The seats in Amsterdam's city council are divided as follows:
Parties in at least Maastricht, Venray, Beek, and Zeewolde demanded that the votes in the municipal elections on Wednesday be recounted, NU.nl reports.
In principle, votes are only recounted if mistakes were made or there is evidence of fraud. In all four these cases, parties want the votes recounted over the division of city council seats - the difference between two parties in each municipality is so minimal that an extra vote or two could mean an extra seat.
In Maastricht, the D66 is two votes short of an extra seat.
GroenLinks won big in the municipal elections and is now the largest party in cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht. With all votes in 325 out of 335 municipalities counted, it seems almost certain that the CDA will remain the biggest party in the Netherlands, RTL Nieuws reports.
In the final debate before the municipal elections, the national party leaders of all parties represented in parliament had a final chance to convince voters to vote for their party on Wednesday. While the debate was for the municipal elections, the party leaders mainly focused on national issues on Tuesday evening, NU.nl reports.
Geert Wilders and the PVV sparked outrage and anger from politicians and various organizations with an anti-Islam campaign video broadcast on NPO on Thursday. A number of politicians and organizations announced that they will be pressing charges of incitement to hatred and violence against the PVV leader as well as the broadcaster.
Ugbaad Kilincci, a PvdA candidate councilor in Emmen, was faced with racism while campaigning in the Drenthe town on Saturday. She was called, among other things, a "ragged-head moron", a "black monkey", and told to "go back to Africa", RTL Nieuws reports.
A video that went viral on Dumpert, showing candidate councilor for Kansrijk Winterswijk Paul Hijink kicking a chair after a disappointing election debate, resulted in a flood of sexist message sent to D66 candidate in Winterswijk Loes ten Dolle, who can also be seen in the video.
"They are just dirty and nasty messages", Ten Dolle said, according to the Telegraaf. She hasn't received any threats.
With just a week to go until the municipal elections, both the D66 and GroenLinks have a solid chance to become the biggest party in Amsterdam. Both parties currently stand at 17 percent of Amsterdam votes - good for 9 seats in the city council, according to a poll by Maurice de Hond of Peil.nl, Het Parool reports.
Nine seats is an increase of three seats for GroenLinks, and a loss of 5 seats for the D66.The party that comes out the biggest after the municipal election on March 21st can take the lead in forming a new coalition.
The European Parliament launched a thorough investigation into the appointment of German lawyer Martin Selmayr as Secretary General of the European Commission, which basically puts him in charge of 33 thousand EU officials. This follows a debate on the matter insisted on by, among others, Dutch European Parliamentarians, AD reports.
The parliamentary inquiry comes on top of an ongoing investigation by the European Ombudsman. The European Parliament will make a statement on the appointment next month, and it may even lead to a vote of no confidence.
Departing Schiphol CEO Jos Nijhuis is facing a storm of criticism from politicians after he said that his successor will be a man, otherwise Schiphol's board will have more women than men.
ING Bank raised the salary of CEO Ralph Hamers by more than half this year, to over 3 million euros, NOS reports. Parliamentarians are furious and demand an explanation. Minister Wopke Hoekstra of Finance is "not amused", according to newspaper AD.
Eleven Amsterdam political parties signed an agreement on Tuesday night aimed at strengthening the interests of the Jewish community in the Dutch capital. "With this agreement the parties state that the city will cherish its Jewish history and will care for its Jewish inhabitants", Ruben Vis, secretary of the organization for Jewish municipalities NIK and initiator of this agreement, said, Het Parool reports.
More voters plan to vote for a local party in the upcoming municipal elections than did in 2014, according to a poll by Maurice de Hond. In the previous municipal elections 27 percent of voters voted local, now 30 percent say they plan to vote for a local party on March 21st.
This is especially striking because more national parties are participating in more municipalities this year.
D66 parliamentarian Salima Belhaj thinks that the Dutch military must be made more sustainable, for example by using hybrid trucks instead of diesel or letting soldiers on mission grow part of their food there. She is submitting a set of proposals on how to achieve this to Minister Ank Bijleveld of Defense on Tuesday, she said in an interview with newspaper Trouw.
Netherlands members of parliament will permit an investigation to determine whether a pattern of sexual harassment and sexual intimidation occurs in the Dutch government. After the summer, employees will be asked whether they have had to endure unwanted intimacies, according to a policy approved by the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament.
The Dutch Senate voted in favor of a new law that automatically makes every adult living in the Netherlands an organ donor. Adults will have to explicitly opt-out of being a donor if they do not wish to participate in the life saving medical procedure.
A half-Russian Tilburg man pressed discrimination charges against D66 leader Alexander Pechtold over is reaction to the affair around Foreign Affairs Minister Halbe Zijlstra lying about a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Minister Halbe Zijlstra of Foreign Affairs admitting that he lied about having a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, was met by fierce criticism from opposition parties in the Tweede Kamer. The coalition parties call his actions mainly "unwise", NOS reports.
The Amsterdam party for the elderly PvdO refuses to work with the D66 over a statement candidate councilor Yassmine El Ksaihi made about homosexuality in an interview with NRC in 2010. The D66 candidate said that "homosexuality is a sin in Islam".
"This statement is pure homophobia and seriously impedes the emancipation of homosexuals", Wil van Soest of the PvdO said to the Telegraaf. The party will not work with the D66 as long as it supports homophobia, according to the newspaper.
Steven van der Heijden removed himself from the municipal election candidate list for the D66 in Best over a beheading 'joke'. In 2016 he shared a photo in a group message in which fellow student and now Leefbaar Etten-Leur councilor is depicted as a prisoner of terrorist organization Islamic State that is about to be beheaded, De Gelderlander reports.
Raats reported to picture to the police at the time. When he found out that Van Heijden is appearing on the electoral list of the D66 faction in Best, he posted his displeasure about this online.
A debate on the new, highly controversial, organ donation law in the Eerste Kamer, the Dutch Senate, went on well into the night on Tuesday, but did not come to a decisive end. The Senators want initiator, D66 parliamentarian Pia Dijkstra, to first clarify a number of questions and therefore decided to postpone voting on the law by a week, NOS reports.
Amsterdam mayor Jozias van Aartsen is receiving signals that the number of incidents targeting minorities in the city is on the rise, he said on Wednesday in a city council debate about a decapitated doll left at the Emir Sultan Mosque in Amsterdam Noord last week, Het Parool and AT5 report.
Schiphol can expand with takeoff and landing strips on the coast, residents living around the Amsterdam airport state in a report that will be handed to Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen of Infrastructure and Water Management on Tuesday. They hope that this report will prompt the minister to investigate alternatives to growing the airport in its current location, BNR reports.
The question of whether or not to bring the children of Dutch rebel fighters in the Syrian civil war back to the Netherlands, has the government parties divided. Doing so was proposed by the D66 and ChristenUnie, but the VVD is vehemently against it. What fourth government party, the CDA, thinks about this, is not yet clear, NOS reports.
"Before you know it, the parents will come too", VVD parliamentarian Barbara Visser said on Twitter. "The VVD chooses for the safety and freedom of the children in the Netherlands!"
