Politics: Dutch PM resigns on migration issue, seeks re-election
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Days after the killing of an Algerian-origin migrant teenager triggered widespread arson and violence across France, and the Qur’an burning incident in Sweden, which angered Muslims across the world, the Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s coalition government collapsed on Friday over “insurmountable” differences on how to tackle migration of aliens into the North European nation.
He submitted his resignation to King Willem-Alexander on Saturday.
The outgoing PM would seek re-election in the polls due in November, the media reported.
Rutte, 56, the Netherlands’ longest-serving leader and one of Europe’s most experienced politicians, said days of crisis talks between the four parties of his coalition failed to produce a deal.
They fell out over Rutte’s plans to tighten curbs on reuniting families of asylum seekers, a bid to curb numbers following a scandal last year over overcrowded migration centers.
“It is no secret that the center-left coalition partners have very different views on migration policy,” Rutte, the leader of the center-right VVD party, told a press conference after talks broke down.
The sudden collapse sparked bitter recriminations between the four parties in the year-and-a-half-old coalition, which had been dubbed “Rutte IV” because it was his fourth coalition government in over a decade.
ChristenUnie– a Christian Democratic party that draws its main support from the staunchly Protestant “Bible Belt” in the central Netherlands — and center-left D66 had opposed Rutte’s plan, reportedly envisaging that the number of relatives of war refugees allowed into the Netherlands is capped at 200 per month.
Rutte had promised to tackle migration after last summer’s migration centers scandal, during which a baby died and hundreds of people were forced to sleep in the open.
The Netherlands now faces one of its most stormy and divisive election campaigns in years.
Local media said Rutte had taken a tough stance on migration to deflect a challenge from the right wing of the VVD, whose voters the farmer party has begun to woo.
And Rutte has long been under pressure on the issue of migration because of the strength of far-right parties in the Netherlands, including that of anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders.
