1. This is what happened last Thursday:
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government collapsed over a migration policy dispute, pointing the Netherlands toward an early election as soon as this fall.
Rutte, who has led the government since 2010, said several days of talks within his four-party coalition failed to overcome “too irreconcilable” differences. The cabinet will stay on in a caretaker capacity and continue to support Ukraine in its military response to Russia’s invasion, he said. (Source: bloomberg.com)
2. This is why it happened:
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte pulled the plug on his own government by cornering coalition partners over a deal to limit the inflow of migrants, setting the stage for a more conservative campaign ahead of elections expected late this year.
“All parties have gone to great lengths to find a solution,” Rutte said at a press conference on Friday as he announced the abrupt collapse of his fourth cabinet over a disagreement on the right to family reunions for refugees from war zones.
Rutte put himself into a position which could have ended with only one outcome: the collapse of his four-party coalition, said people familiar with the talks who declined to be identified discussing non-public matters.
The coalition partners — Rutte’s VVD, the Christian Democrats, progressive D66 and the smaller Christian Union — have been in talks over the asylum policy for weeks. They were close to a deal at the start of the week until Rutte abruptly introduced non-negotiable demands on Wednesday, the people said.
The prime minister asked his coalition parties to leave the cabinet if they didn’t agree with a proposal to limit the right to family reunions for refugees from war zones to 200 people per month after a period of two years, two of the people said….
The abrupt collapse of the coalition over the migration issue raised the possibility that Rutte was pursuing a deliberate tactic to enhance his prospects for reelection — by pushing his party further to the right at a time populism seems on the rise in Europe. (Source: bloomberg.com)
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