The Dutch government issues on asylum policy and the New York Times sees a European trend in this | outside

The fall of the government has been in the air for days. The final crisis meeting took place in The Hague on Friday where a compromise proposal from the Secretary of State for Asylum, Erik van der Burgh, was discussed. Dutch media reported that this came to nothing, meaning that Rutte IV’s government would end after 543 days.

The Dutch news agency ANP reported, based on various sources, that Cristenoni, the smallest party in the coalition, had taken the initiative to bring down the government. The position of the liberal party in VD, Prime Minister Rutte’s party, is said to have played an important role in this. But the Dutch Prime Minister denies this, saying: “It is a unanimous decision.” Rutte emphasized that the four parties had jointly come to the conclusion that there was no point in continuing the talk.

Rutte has significantly increased pressure on the coalition government this week by placing additional requirements on the asylum package. The proposal to limit the possibility of family reunification was hard for the Christian Union to swallow. In any case, Rutte does not blame himself for anything, except that “he could have presented his objections in a more friendly manner.” “This is not the cause of the government’s downfall,” Rutte said. Other parties refer to the leader of the VVD. CDA chairman Peter Herma called his stance reckless and “irresponsibly cruel”.

The Dutch government information service reported that at 9:30 pm on Friday, an additional council of ministers is scheduled. Then Prime Minister Rutte spoke to the press. Rutte said at the press conference that the differences between the coalition parties in the field of immigration have proven to be insurmountable. He described the situation as “unfortunate, but the political reality we cannot ignore.” “It is unfortunate that this separation in the middle of the road prevents us from finishing the work,” he said of the collaboration in the coalition.

The Secretary of State for Asylum, Eric van der Burgh, is disappointed that there is no asylum agreement. He finds it particularly disturbing to all the people who have been working for months to ensure adequate reception spaces for asylum seekers. I promised them an asylum deal.

Van der Burgh has the idea that “everything is removed” for the immigration agreement. He also presented proposals on Friday to bridge the gap between the four coalition parties. “But I noticed that it didn’t work out.” According to him, there was no will, but there was an “unbridgeable gap.”

It’s frustrating. “I am disappointed that there is no agreement.” When asked whether VVD leader and Prime Minister Mark Rutte had put undue pressure on the negotiations, he did not want to comment. “Stay away from partisan politics.”

There has not been a cabinet headed by Mark Rutte for as short a period as the fourth, which is what caught up in the asylum problem. The fall came 543 days after he was sworn in by the king. His second cabinet was made up of the VVD, D66, CDA and ChristenUnie.

New elections are likely to take place sometime in the fall. It won’t happen before mid-November, the Electoral Council says. Getting ready to go to the polls takes time. For example, new parties must be given the opportunity to register, parties need time to compile lists of candidates and municipalities must arrange polling stations. The exact moment of the new elections will be announced at a later date. They learned later on Friday evening that the opposition wanted elections to be held as soon as possible.

Before calling new elections, Prime Minister Mark Rutte had to first formally offer the king the resignation of his fourth government. Ruti did so in writing on Friday evening. Today, Rutte is going to update the king, who had to return from abroad for this. The fact that the king returned to the Netherlands is evidenced by the royal standard raised at Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague. Rutte arrived there for “an explanation of the government’s request to resign”.

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Willem-Alexander must then formally dissolve the Chamber of Deputies. When the House of Representatives is dissolved, it will also decide when candidates can stand for election. The vote will take place after 44 days, according to the Electoral Council. The entire process takes up to three months.

According to the New York Times, the downfall of the Dutch government can be placed on a European trend. Asylum policy has become an important topic in large parts of the European Union, and attitudes are hardening.

In a number of EU countries, immigration is leading to the growing popularity of the far-right. The New York Times reports the recent electoral successes of Vox in Spain, the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, all sides deeply involved in the asylum debate. Moreover, both Italy and Hungary, with Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán, have prime ministers who are very critical of the number of immigrants coming to Europe.

According to the American newspaper, this trend also affected the downfall of Rutte IV. To get the wind out of the far-right’s sails, parties of the right and left will have to take a tougher line on immigration. Other government parties believed that Prime Minister Mark Rutte had taken an unnecessarily aggressive stance and that the Cabinet had collapsed as a result.

The German news agency DPA reports that the Netherlands is experiencing a “fundamentally self-inflicted refugee crisis”. The 47,000 asylum seekers who entered the country last year will not be an “extraordinarily large number”. The German news agency believes that the long waiting times in the process were due to austerity measures and a tight housing market.

Although international media such as the British BBC also point to parties such as the PVV that made it difficult for Rutte on the issue of immigration, most believe that he was mainly pressured by the emergence of the BBB. He won a landslide election victory in the Senate. BBB is more outspoken about agricultural policy.