AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte won a clear victory in Wednesday’s national election to secure a fourth term in office, exit polls showed.
Rutte’s center-right party, the VVD, is set to win 35 seats in the 150-strong parliament with the pro-European group D66 in second place with 27 seats, its best ever result, according to an exit poll by Ipsos. Geert Wilders’ populists slipped to third place with 17 seats from second in 2017.
The result sets Rutte up to become the longest serving premier in Dutch history after an election campaign that was overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic. Rutte has won praise for his handling of the virus adding to his his longstanding popularity with voters. Even so, the process of putting together could take months.
The rise of D66 and the decline in support for Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra could signal a more cooperative approach in Europe after a period in which Rutte has often worked to put a brake on plans for deeper integration, according to Amy Verdun, a visiting professor of European politics at the University of Leiden.
“The Dutch strategy of making alliances with smaller countries is not in the spirit of Europe,” she said. “It is not winning strategy and I think it will change.”
Hoekstra’s Christian Democrats slipped to fourth place with 14 seats. The Christian Democrats and D66 both had 19 seats in the last parliament and Hoekstra may now have to cede the finance ministry to D66 leader Sigrid Kaag.
All the same, the Christian Democrats remain the group most closely aligned with Rutte’s party and at least four groups will be needed to form a majority. Rutte has ruled out governing with Wilders.
During the campaign, Kaag criticized Rutte’s approach to EU politics, arguing that the Netherlands, the fifth-biggest economy in the bloc, should seek to forge a common project with the biggest powers rather than joining smaller countries. Rutte and Hoekstra last year fought alongside Austria, Denmark and Sweden to water down the EU’s 750 billion-euro ($900 billion) recovery package after it was proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron of France.
“We should cooperate more with France and Germany,” she said last month during an online seminar organized by the Centre for European Reform, a research institute. “They set the tone and the agenda. It is important to be trustworthy and that we are the go to-partners for the French and Germans.”
Another pro-European party, Volt, enters parliament for the first time with four seats.
The first priority for the next government will be to get the pandemic under control and then rebuild the economy. Dutch output shrank by 4.1% last year and the European Commission is forecasting an expansion of just 1.8% for 2021, the weakest in the European Union.Rutte ditched his longstanding commitment to budget discipline when the pandemic struck, handing out 48.5 billion euros in aid last year to keep businesses afloat. Investors can expect the fiscal support to be maintained to some degree — another 30 billion euros in support for 2021 and a study by analysts at ING Groep NV showed that the policy plans of the four parties in the current caretaker coalition would increase government spending by 0.8% of GDP on average over the next four years.Higher corporate taxes are also on the cards with Rutte’s VVD proposing to increase the burden on businesses by 3.5 billion euros. The Labour party, at the other end of the spectrum, is eyeing as much as 40 billion euros. All parties are also looking to raise the minimum wage and lower income tax.
The next government will also be responsible for Europe’s main equities trading hub after most business shifted from London to Amsterdam following the U.K.’s departure from the EU single market at the end of last year. Still, the Dutch financial center is struggling to compete with Paris and Frankfurt when it comes to attracting bankers moving out of the
