Does the rise of Dutch centrism spell doom for Europe’s far proper? | News | USAEMALL.com

At 38, Rob Jetten, with his confident smile and “We can do it” slogan, is on course to become the Netherlands’s youngest prime minister.

His liberal-progressive D66 party almost tripled its number of seats in parliament in the October 29 general election.

Dutch far-right firebrand Geert Wilders suffered significant losses in the vote, as his anti-immigration, anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) shed 11 seats, returning to the opposition after a hobbling first stint in a coalition government.

While this result was cast as a victory for the centre over the far right, and a good omen for Europe’s liberal front, experts sound a note of caution.

“There was a return to the centre in the sense that a number of centre parties gained in these elections,” Leiden University professor Bernard Steunenberg told Al Jazeera.

Jetten’s D66 bagged 26 seats, a gain of 17 seats since the last election. The Christian Democrats (CDA), another party near the centre, won 18 seats, nine more than in 2023.

But “we still have a rather substantial right-wing volume of voters”, Steunenberg added.

Wilders’s PVV and Jetten’s D66 both won 26 seats in the Dutch parliament, becoming the biggest parties by seat numbers. The former won over the latter by a slim margin of 28,400 votes, out of more than 10 million cast.

PVV won about 17 percent of the vote, down from about a quarter in 2023, its second-highest election score.

Experts say that far-right ideas and policies have not been sidelined in the Netherlands. Yet, the centrists’ huge gains may hold a lesson for other European parties.

Far-right vote splinters

Rather than shrinking, support for the far right splintered.

Some former PVV voters backed other hard-right parties, such as the Forum for Democracy (FvD). Having won just three seats in the November 2023 election, FvD secured seven this time around.

FvD was born as an Eurosceptic think tank in 2015 and entered politics two years later. Compared with PVV, it focuses on traditional values as well as the rejection of state intervention, including on issues such as climate change and COVID-19.

Similarly, the more moderate-sounding Juiste Antwoord 2021 (JA21) party increased its seats from one to nine. Armida van Rij, a researcher at the Centre for European Reform, described the JA21 as “a PVV-light party, with equally extreme ideas but presenting themselves as more palatable to the electorate and other parties”.

Of a total of 150 seats in the Dutch lower house, the far-right bloc in parliament has remained roughly the same size; it won 42 seats, compared with 41 in 2023.

The grouping has witnessed a steady ascent. After the 2021 election, Dutch far-right parties had a combined share of 28 seats.

“This doesn’t mean that the right-wing parties are coherent and form a solid bloc – they are quite fragmented, and it’s very difficult to form a right-wing coalition in which the PVV is participating,” Steunenberg said.

Wilders was responsible for the downfall of the previous government, a teetering alliance between the far-right PVV, the conservative liberals (VVD), the centre-right New Social Contract (NSC) and the agrarian Farmers-Citizens Movement (BBB).

Less than a year after it was established, the 62-year-old triggered a cabinet crisis over tougher measures to curb migration, leading to the snap vote.

Rather than skirt away from the far-right ideology, voters appear to have penalised the party for Wilders’s decision to pull out of government after only 11 months, as well as for its perceived failure to deliver on issues such as affordable housing and better healthcare.

Signpost for Europe

At a time when populist parties are vying for power across Europe, the Dutch general election could be a signpost.

But analysts warn against drawing narrow comparisons.

“We should be modest in thinking what this means for other countries in the European Union, because it depends on how the political situation is in different member states,” Steunenberg said.

“For example, in France, the centre – which is [President] Emmanuel Macron – has been very disappointing to many, and it has triggered a new movement towards [the fringes] on the left and right.”

Despite the differences, the Dutch vote holds a few takeaways for centrist parties.

Elizabeth Kuiper, associate director at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre (EPC) think tank, described Jetten’s campaign as “Obama-esque” – a nod to former United States President Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign.

D66 led a campaign that was “very positive” and focused on heartfelt issues, she said.

“In these past years, we have seen [Dutch] voters feeling alienated from their governments, especially when it comes to affordable housing, green energy and healthcare,” Kuiper told a conference organised by EPC.

“D66 approached these topics from a very positive perspective, whereas the others tried to win the competition with Wilders when it comes to migration – being much more toxic and making it a problem.”

According to Kuiper, while other centrist parties adopted some far-right ideas and policies on the issue of migration, D66 fought Wilders with a more “positive” agenda.

Steunenberg said that centrist parties should rely on more “positive” campaigns that focus on what voters would like to see changed, “instead of framing it in very simplistic terms in which blame is being shifted towards different groups in society”.

D66 now faces difficult choices about whom to enter into government with, and bears the responsibility of delivering on its electoral promises.

“If they fail, then I’m not sure what may happen at the next election,” said Steunenberg. “Many would be disappointed – and far-right parties may gain again.”