Far-right leader Geert Wilders toppled the Dutch ruling coalition on Tuesday, gambling that an election focused on immigration will deliver victory for his party and secure his decades-old ambition of becoming prime minister.
His Freedom Party (PVV) ditched Dick Schoof’s government just weeks before the Netherlands hosts a major Nato summit in The Hague.
It means a new election will take place – although no date has yet been set – just as Europe faces a resurgence of far-right sentiment on immigration.
“I intend to become the next prime minister,” Mr Wilders told reporters. “I am going to make the PVV bigger than ever.”
But despite a European shift to the right – as seen in Poland’s presidential election on Sunday – his plan could still backfire.
Polls indicate declining popularity for the PVV since it joined the government. Even if it remains the largest party, fashioning a coalition will be difficult in a deeply polarised nation.
Mr Schoof said he and ministers from his party will remain in office in a caretaker capacity until the election, and that he would offer the resignation of PVV ministers to the Dutch king.
Mr Wilders, the longest-serving Dutch politician, gradually climbed to power after entering parliament in 1998, running on an anti-Islam platform that called for zero immigration and expelling asylum seekers.
He tapped concerns of voters disillusioned with established politics and concerns about housing costs and healthcare that he has associated with immigration.
His eurosceptic Freedom Party joined a power-sharing, right-wing coalition in 2024 after a record win in the general election, but Mr Wilders said the government failed to make good on promises to clamp down on immigration.
Immigration has slowed significantly since a peak in 2022. The Netherlands received almost two first-time asylum applications per 1,000 inhabitants in 2024, slightly below the European Union average, according to Eurostat data.
Ten EU countries had a higher relative number of asylum seekers last year, including neighbouring Germany and Belgium.
Junior coalition government members, including the conservative VVD party of ex-prime minister Mark Rutte, were reluctant to embrace some of Mr Wilders’ harshest ideas, including closing the borders to asylum seekers, returning Syrian refugees and closing asylum shelters.
Those proposals also flew in the face of EU obligations and a Dutch humanitarian tradition since the Second World War of taking in people fleeing conflict.
Focusing attention on immigration is a critical electoral strategy for the PVV, said Simon Otjes, assistant professor of Dutch politics at Leiden University.
“Wilders is trying to return the focus back to immigration in the hopes that that will be the main theme in the coming elections,” Mr Otjes said. “A lot can happen in the next six months and it will be very unpredictable.”
Mr Wilders’ anti-Islam rhetoric has prompted death threats and travel bans to Muslim nations that trade with the Netherlands.
His 17-minute film, Fitna, enraged the Muslim world in 2008 by linking verses from the Quran with footage of terrorist attacks, and he was convicted of discrimination after he insulted Moroccans at a campaign rally in 2014.
The central question now will be whether Mr Wilders can turn a future election into a referendum on immigration policy that effectively undercuts his opponents, said Joep van Lit, political researcher at Radboud University in Nijmegen. “But it’s hard to tell how voters will react,” he said.
Reuters and AP contributed to this report
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