The Hague, Netherlands — The ruling Dutch three-party coalition led by Prime Minister Rob Jetten came close to collapse on Thursday, less than nine months into its four-year term, after a deal to fund next year’s tax plan angered a coalition partner.
Jetten’s centrist D66 party and the center-right Christian Democrats announced a deal on Wednesday with two center-left opposition parties to support the tax package, a key part of the annual government budget, in the Dutch parliament.
But fellow coalition member the right-wing People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, criticized the agreement, calling it bad for the Netherlands and a breach of the coalition deal the three coalition parties had negotiated.
Jetten skipped a European Union summit in Ireland to attend a parliamentary debate on the tax measures.
The parties that reached the agreement said it would raise taxes on high earners and reduce taxes for low-income people.
After Wednesday night’s meeting, VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, who also serves as the Dutch defense minister, said her party had been surprised “by the fact that our coalition partners struck a deal with an opposition party.”
She called the proposal “a poor proposal” and said it “runs counter to the coalition agreement.”
She said that if the other coalition parties voted for the deal after the parliamentary debate on Thursday, “we will at least need a fundamental reset.”
She did not elaborate on what that reset would mean for the future of the coalition.
If the government were to fall, it could pave the way for fresh elections next year, the fifth general election in less than a decade in the politically fragmented Netherlands.
The crisis echoes a similar standoff in neighboring Belgium, where Prime Minister Bart De Wever earlier tendered his resignation to the king amid a prolonged budget crisis. King Philippe last Friday rejected the resignation and asked De Wever’s coalition to resume negotiations.
Jetten’s government had been considered a risky political experiment from the outset, holding only 66 of the lower house’s 150 seats. Jetten was sworn in in February as the Netherlands’ youngest and first openly gay prime minister.
He narrowly won an election in late October last year, securing the same number of seats as anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, but with slightly more votes. The result was decided by a count of postal ballots.
Jetten said when he took office that he wanted to usher in a new era of consensus politics in parliament after years of bickering between parties. But that largely failed to materialize, with his coalition unable to avoid internal divisions over its plans and opposition parties making tough demands in return for supporting legislation.
That culminated in the deal that Jetten’s D66 party and the Christian Democrats struck with the center-left parties PRO and Volt, enraging the VVD.