Dutch talks to form new coalition govt fail
Differences over immigration have scuppered attempts to form a four-party coalition government in The Netherlands, after more than eight weeks of negotiations, the official leading the talks said late Monday.
"We have tried everything to narrow the gaps, and they have become smaller .... but we just couldn't succeed," veteran Dutch politician Edith Schippers told reporters.
She had been leading the effort to forge a common agenda between the party of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte's Liberal Party (VVD) and three others.
The VVD, which won 33 MPs in March elections, has been in talks with the conservative Christian Democratic Appel (CDA) and the progressive Democracy Party (D66), which both won 19 seats.
But to reach a majority in the 150-seat lower house, the negotiations also included the ecologist left party GroenLinks, whose young, charismatic leader Jesse Klaver boosted his party's MPs from four to 14 in the polls.
From the beginning, doubts were raised about whether Klaver would be prepared to make the kind of compromises especially demanded by the CDA.
Rutte described the failure of the talks as "a pity," adding: "We wanted them to be successful, but we didn't succeed. We decided together that it just wouldn't work."
Immigration had proved the main stumbling block, Rutte said, adding there had also been differences over climate change and income levels.
Had the talks succeeded, the new four-party coalition would have had a total of 85 MPs -- a comfortable majority especially when faced with the far-right anti-Islam party of controversial MP Geert Wilders, who with 20 MPs makes up the largest party in the opposition.
Wilders crowed in a Tweet: "Very good news. No GroenLinks," adding his Freedom Party "is fully available."
Rutte however has vowed not to work with Wilders's anti-Islam anti-EU party even though it came second in the polls.
So it is likely, Rutte will now turn to one of the smaller parties, such as conservative Christian Union which won five seats. That would give them a very narrow 76-seat majority.
Schippers told reporters at a surprise press conference that she has already informed King Willem-Alexander of the failure of the talks, and would prepare a report to go before the new parliament.
Coalition governments are the norm in The Netherlands, and the arduous negotiations are part of Dutch political life. In 2012 it took Rutte 54 days to put together a government -- a relatively short time. The longest it took was 208 days in 1977.