Mark Rutte

Five years ago today Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board, including 196 Dutch. The victims of this disaster were commemorated at the National MH17 Monument in Vijfhuizen on Wednesday afternoon. 

After days of long and intense meetings in Brussels, the European leaders reached an agreement. Dutch Frans Timmermans will not be the president of the European Commission. That position will go to German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen. Instead Timmermans will likely stay on in his current position, vice-president of the European Commission, though the European Parliament still has to approve that, NOS and RTL Nieuws report.

Queen Maxima is facing criticism over a meeting she had with Mohammed bin Salman at the G20 summit in Osaka on Friday. The controversial crown prince of Saudi Arabia is accused of orchestrating the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October last year. Multiple Dutch parliamentarians criticized the meeting. UN rapporteur Agnes Callamard, who investigated the journalist's murder, called it "extraordinarily disappointing" that the Dutch Queen did not broach this topic. Prime Minister Mark Rutte is baffled by the commotion.

Prime Minister ark Rutte and the American Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo opened the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in The Hague on Monday afternoon. Some 2 thousand entrepreneurs, investors and representatives of government organizations from 134 countries will meet and make deals at the business summit over the next two days.

In addition to entrepreneurs and others from the business world, a number of prominent people like Queen Maxima and Ivanka Trump will also attend the summit. 

Prime Minister Mark Rutte delayed the publication of the planning offices' climate agreement calculations until after Budget Day, because he thought a debate about the climate would be "undesirable" at this point, Nieuwsuur reports based on documents it received by appealing to the Government Information Act. Opposition parties in parliament are outraged and want a quick explanation from Rutte about the pressure he exerted on the planning offices to delay this publication, NOS reports.

The political composition of the Eerste Kamer, the upper house of Dutch parliament, was made clear on Monday, with both the right wing VVD and far right nationalists FvD holding 12 seats. The ruling coalition parties, CDA, D66, ChristenUnie and Prime Minister Mark Rutte's VVD, kept 32 of their 38 seats.

There are 75 seats in the Eerste Kamer, making 38 the number to reach in order to claim a simple majority.

PVV leader Geert Wilders is disappointed by the exit polls results for the European Parliament elections. His anti-EU party received 4.1 percent of the votes, compared to 13.3 percent in the previous European elections. That means that his PVV will lose three of its four seats.

The Temporary Committee on Mining Damage in Groningen received 90 damage reports on Wednesday after a 3.4 magnitude earthquake hit the province near the village of Westerwijwerd early in the morning. There were also 12 reports of potentially acutely dangerous situations, NU.nl reports.

VVD leader Mark Rutte and Forum voor Democratie leader Thierry Baudet will face off against each other in a debate on television program Pauw on NPO on Wednesday evening. No one else is invited to participate in the debate. Other parties, particularly left-wing GroenLinks and PvdA, are annoyed that only the right and far-right will be represented in this debate on the eve of the European Parliament elections, which are being held in the Netherlands on Thursday.

In the run-up to the European Parliament elections next week, Prime Minister Mark Rutte is talking about his vision for Europe. According to the VVD leader, his ideas about that have shifted.  "Europe is market and currency, but a point has been added", he said to Nieuwsuur on Wednesday night. That point is safety. Without the European Union, the Netherlands is just a small country on its own in a big and increasingly volatile world. 

The Netherlands remembered the victims of the Second World War with commemorations across the country on Saturday. King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Prime Minister Mark Rutte attended the National Commemoration in Amsterdam on Saturday evening. Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema stressed that the the lack of freedom during the war must be passed on so that it can be remembered "as if the war were yesterday. Even if no one remembers what it is like to live in an occupied country", Het Parool reports.