“The winds of change are here! Congratulations to Geert Wilders on winning the Dutch elections,” Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said late on Wednesday. Other Euroskeptic leaders have already congratulated Wilders with speed and obvious joy. And if they continue increase their political power within the European bloc, they will have a lot of very big toys to play with on the world stage. Partly, it’s because they like the economic benefits of being in the EU. This is partly why Wilders’ threats of leaving the EU might not actually be Brussels’ biggest headache.Įuroskeptics these days, as a whole, don’t want to leave the EU – they want to run it instead. The right in particular is very good at this and has increased its influence at a Brussels level considerably in recent years. This can happen both in the Council – which is made up of ministers and leaders from national governments – and in the European Parliament, where parties on the right or left from different countries form alliances. Having more than one delinquent in the club also means they can gang up. This allows countries to whack the rest of the bloc over the head over very domestic matters, in some cases blocking the whole EU budget – over a trillion euros. The EU tends to make decisions by unanimous votes, meaning every member state has a veto. However, having them inside the tent can also lead to problems. In some cases it can soften their impact by dangling financial carrots or assistance with policies aimed at domestic audiences, such as border control. The EU is generally good at containing these sorts of leaders. Italy's Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni and Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama give a joint news conference as they signed an agreement on migration in Rome on November 6. Italy currently has its most right-wing government since the end of the Second World War and Slovakia re-elected the left-wing populist Robert Fico to office in September. The rise of European populism is not exactly new. It is possible that Wilders could take a job that doesn’t place him at the head of the government, though that would presumably mean some serious compromises on his policy platform.īeyond those immediate concerns, there are questions as to what Wilders’ victory means for the direction of Dutch and European politics more broadly. It would be very unusual for a party that comprehensively won the most seats to be locked out of government. What that potential coalition government would actually look like is also unclear. A joint Labour/Green ticket finished second in the election, with 25 seats. The most obvious path to office for Wilders is a coalition with the VVD, which came third with 24 seats, and New Social Contract, a Christian conservative party that followed with 20 seats, according to a provisional forecast based on 98% of the votes counted. While the results show an overall victory for parties on the right, Wilders’ anti-Islam, anti-immigration, anti-European Union and Ukraine-skeptic manifesto was widely perceived to be beyond the pale for the center-right Freedom and Democracy Party (VVD) of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Wilders and the PVV might have won the most seats (a forecast 37 out of a total 150), but it’s unclear if they have enough support to form a coalition government. The things that happened after (Donald) Trump was elected, the sentiments and changes in politics, this could be similar,” Catherine de Vries, a political science professor at Italy’s Bocconi University, told CNN. “I honestly feel like this is the Trump moment for the Dutch. The shock election results in the Netherlands have taken Europe by surprise, and left many onlookers unsure exactly what happens next.įar-right populist Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV) are now seeking to form a government after an unexpectedly big win in Wednesday’s national vote.
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