Netherlands: how will the new government perform?
In the Netherlands, the new right-wing government of the four-party coalition comprising the right-wing populist PVV, the conservative VVD, the centrist NSC and the protest party BBB was sworn in on Tuesday. It will be headed by the non-aligned former civil servant Dick Schoof, with ministerial posts going to right-wing populists for the first time. Commentators express a sense of foreboding.
A dangerous game
Hopefully the PVV's coalition partners have not miscalculated, De Volkskrant puts in:
“Even after seven months of negotiations, not a shred of trust has grown between the coalition parties. The Schoof government will be a team whose main protagonists are constantly watching each other with one eye and eyeing the exit with the other. [The moderate right-wing parties] VVD and NSC, meanwhile, are hoping to emerge victorious from this game without compromising the rule of law and societal relations, but they have no guarantees. On the contrary: no greater political risk has been taken in the Netherlands since the end of the Second World War.”
Sawing away at the EU edifice
The Dutch PVV and the French RN are trying to destroy the EU from within, Jutarnji list fears:
“As founding states of the EU that have always been pioneers of internal integration - from the introduction of the euro to the Schengen Area - France and the Netherlands are now turning into countries where all these European achievements are seen in a negative context. The far right is slowly adapting, abandoning ideas such as leaving the EU, because the Dutch are very happy with their country being in the EU, even if they vote for the far right. But the latter is now starting to dismantle the EU from within instead of trying to leave it. So France and the Netherlands now pose a serious threat to the EU.”