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Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom party, part of the hard-right coalition government.
Hard Numbers: The Netherlands nixes asylum-seekers, Sudan strife escalates, South Koreans agitate, Beijing condemns US-Taiwan arms deal, Bulgarians vote – again
51,000: The Dutch nationalist government on Friday approved tough new migration measures in Parliament, including enhanced border checks, an end to mandatory municipal settlement of asylum-seekers, and limits on family reunification. The policy comes after 51,000 asylum applications were made in the past 12 months and reflects shifts in Italy, Sweden, and other EU nations towards tighter migration controls.
124: An attack by the Rapid Support Forces on Friday killed at least 124 people in Al-Sareeha village in Sudan, with reports of over 200 injured and 150 detained. The attack marked the latest escalation in the conflict between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, which has displaced millions and triggered a severe humanitarian crisis.
230,000: South Korean Christians held a mass protest in Seoul on Sunday to oppose a court ruling granting same-sex partners spousal health benefits, fearing it paves the way for legalizing same-sex marriage. The protest disrupted traffic as organizers claimed over a million participants, while police estimated the crowd at 230,000.
2 billion: China on Saturday condemned a $2 billion US arms sale to Taiwan, the 17th of the Biden administration to the island, vowing “countermeasures” to defend its sovereignty. Beijing warns that the deal, which includes advanced air defense systems, “seriously damages China-US relations, and endangers peace and stability” in the strait.
7: Exit polls show Boyko Borisov's GERB party leading Bulgaria’s seventh election in three years, but forming a coalition could be difficult: The last election in June produced a hung Parliament. This time, the pro-Russian Vazrazhdane party underperformed, while the Reformist PP-DB exceeded expectations. Final results are expected on Monday.FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand at the entrance to a building during a raid in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Security forces have searched several properties in Berlin, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein in connection with the ban on the terrorist organization Hamas and the international network Samidoun in Germany.
US and Canada list Samidoun as a terrorist group
The United States and Canada both moved Tuesday to designate Samidoun as a terrorist entity, following Germany, which banned the group last year, and the Netherlands, which banned it last week. Samidoun, which is also known as the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, is headquartered in Vancouver and is accused of having links to and advancing the agenda of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is already listed as a terrorist group.
The listing means that governments in both countries can freeze assets belonging to the group and prevent them from banking, for instance.
Calls for Samidoun to be listed increased after a rally in Vancouver on Oct. 7, the anniversary of the terrorist attack on Israel, where a masked woman led a crowd in chants of “death to Canada, death to the United States, and death to Israel,” and Canadian flags were burned.
Prosecutors are weighing whether to file hate speech charges against one of the group’s leaders over an earlier rally.
In Canada and the United States, rallies against the war in Gaza have inflamed tensions, and antisemitic incidents have increased dramatically.
On Tuesday, Israel released a report warning that antisemitism in Canada is on the rise and that Jewish places of worship, community centers, and day schools have been targeted. On Saturday morning, a Toronto Jewish girls’ day school was shot at for the second time. Nobody was hurt, and students have returned to class, but the community is fearful.
Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders votes during an EU election in The Hague, Netherlands June 6, 2024.
Europe votes with the far-right on the rise
The Netherlands and Estonia kicked off the European Parliament elections on Thursday, with the rest of the bloc’s 27 member states set to vote on the composition of its ruling body by Sunday.
While each country will have local issues weighing heavily on voters, a few patterns of concern are crossing borders: immigration, the war in Ukraine, and climate policy, particularly where it intersects with energy costs. On balance, the far-right parties like Alternative for Germany, France’s National Rally, and Brothers of Italy look set to grow their seats, but barring a major upset, the ruling center-right coalition under Ursula von der Leyen is expected to stay in control.
That’s thanks, in part, to the far-right’s struggles to get on the same strategic page. The RN’s leader, Marine Le Pen, chose to distance herself from the AfD after a high official said not all Nazi SS members were criminals. That’s the kind of ideology-driven own goal that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is concurrently serving as president of the European Conservatives and Reformists coalition in Brussels, would sooner avoid.
Italy’s first female PM has leaned hard into apragmatic approach, firmly backing Ukraine and advocating for the right wing to get behind climate policy while pressing for Brussels to do more to control immigration across the Mediterranean, much of which falls on Italy. That tack has made it easier for centrists to work with Meloni, and she stands a good chance of being von der Leyen’s first call after results come in. If Meloni plays her cards right — she’s played a weaker hand almost flawlessly so far — she can stay in the inner loop of decision-making in Europe. And, of course, if the centrists can’t keep her happy, she can join back up with the Le Pens of this world to make them regret it.
15th January 2024 Geert Wilders arrives at palace on the Dam for the Dutch Kings annual New Years Reception.
Wilders in the wilderness: Far-right Dutchman drops PM bid
Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders will not become prime minister of his country, despite getting the most votes in last year’s election.
Although Wilders’ PVV party swept to victory on a scorching anti-Islam and anti-migrant “Dutch First” message, he still needed coalition partners to form a government. Months of talks with a handful of center-right parties ended this week without support for Wilders as PM.
The result prolongs the political uncertainty for the Netherlands, which looks headed for a bizarre “extra-parliamentary cabinet” headed by a technocrat cabinet in which none of the ministers is from the PVV or the other three parties.
On the one hand, the episode is another example of the practical limits for European far-right parties, despite their rising electoral fortunes. (We saw something similar in Portugal last weekend, where the far-right Chega party was sweet at the polls but still too toxic for a coalition.)
But watch closely. Wilders has said he would “like a right-wing cabinet.” Will Wilders, given his obvious popularity, be able to pull policy rightward even from outside the government?
Dutch far-right politician and leader of the PVV, Geert Wilders, reacts as he meets the press in November 2023.
Who will work with Wilders?
That process isn’t going well. Success began looking less likely Tuesday evening when the center-right New Social Contract party announced it would not join a PVV-led government. The NSC’s leader explained that Wilders has made economic promises his party can’t keep, though the NSC also has concerns about the Islamophobic rhetoric that’s central to Wilders’ political brand.
Wilders will continue to try to form a right-wing government. If he fails, the Netherlands might see a Labour-Green alliance that shifts the country’s government to the left. Failing that, they might hold new elections. The talks were supposed to produce a report to parliament before it breaks for recess on Feb. 16, but it’s not clear that deadline can be met.
As in some other European countries – Germany, for example – far-right parties are surging, but few will partner with them to form governments.Dutch far-right politician and leader of the Freedom Party Geert Wilders gestures as he meets with party members after the parliamentary elections in The Hague, Netherlands, on Nov. 23, 2023.
Dutch voters take hard-right turn: Will more of the EU follow?
Wilders has long promoted anti-Muslim policies, including a ban on Islamic schools, Qurans, mosques, and the wearing of hijab inside government buildings. Wilders has now tempered these pledges, saying he will “continue to moderate” his policies as coalition talks resume on Monday.
Wilders’ Freedom Party is expected to obtain 37 seats in the 150-seat Parliament, which falls short of the 76 needed under the Netherlands’ proportional representation system to secure a majority of seats. He must cement alliances with enough other parties to do so, and his dance card includes the center-right New Social Contract Party, with 20 seats, as well as the right-leaning People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, aka VVV, which formed the previous government, now with 24 seats.
Outgoing VVV Prime Minister Mark Rutte says he will not join Wilders’ coalition but could back a “centre-right” government. NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt said he could not enter a coalition with Wilders unless he recanted the Quran and mosque ban. And Wilders wants to cut EU funding and promised a referendum on membership, while Omtzigt opposes a “Nexit.”
Meanwhile, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán toasted Wilder’s win, saying “The winds of change are here!” Far-right Flemish independence leader Tom Van Grieken, who is leading in the polls for Belgium’s June 2024 elections, also congratulated Wilders, saying “Parties like ours are on their way in the whole of Europe.”
But perhaps the most significant beneficiary could be Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National, who also cheered Wilders’ victory. Rassemblement National is leading opinion polls in France for next June’s elections to the European Parliament, with 28% of the vote compared to 19% for French President Emmanuel Macron’s party and its allies. A shift to the right could reverse the EU’s stand on policies related to climate action, EU reform, and weapons for Ukraine, while also impacting migration policies.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders, the leader of the PVV party, speaks during the final debate between the lead candidates in the Dutch election before polls open on Wednesday, in The Hague, Netherlands, November 21, 2023.
Netherlands votes for first new PM in 13 years
The Dutch head to the polls tomorrow to elect their first new prime minister in over a decade. The election has centered on immigration, living standards, climate change, and how conservative the next government will be.
The election was called after outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right government imploded over how to reduce the flow of migrants to the Netherlands – a polarizing issue collapsing centrist coalitions across Europe.
A majority of voters support right-leaning parties. Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party, or PVV, made last-minute gains to take a lead the polls. Wilders has built his career on barring Muslim asylum-seekers from the Netherlands, and his rhetoric has gained traction since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius – another frontrunner from the current PM’s party – is also running on reducing immigration in order to limit the war’s security risks to European countries.
The results are still too close to call. As of this week, 63% of voters remained undecided. Left-wing parties are urging their supporters to strategically vote centrist to block a PVV-led government. Accordingly, Wilders moderated his stances in the last debate, which may have contributed to his last-minute gains.
But the real fun starts after the votes are counted: None of the candidates are expected to get more than 20% of the vote, so the parties must decide what compromises they are willing to make to form a government.
If a hard right coalition is formed, they would seek to radically restrict immigration. A centrist government would follow through on the previous government's plans to increase social spending and renewable energy. A left-wing coalition, meanwhile, would raise taxes on the wealthy and supercharge the adoption of the EU’s green deal that its likely leader, Frans Timmermans, spearheaded as EU climate commissioner.The Graphic Truth: How much it costs to supply Ukraine
As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, proponents of continued military aid to Kyiv say it’s a cut-rate investment for security while others wonder whether the cost is worth it. We look at how much the biggest suppliers spent on military aid to Ukraine as a percentage of their defense budgets last year.