Dutch Leader Mark Rutte Seals Coalition Deal After Longest Ever Talks

(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Mark Rutte reached a coalition deal nearly nine months after the Dutch general election, marking the longest negotiations in the nation’s history.

Rutte, who is expected to be named prime minister once again, presented the agreement between his Liberal party and three partners in the hall of the Dutch parliament building in The Hague Wednesday. 

“It took long, too long, but we have reached a good agreement,” Rutte said.

The government is likely to formally take office in January. Rutte’s party, known as the VVD in Dutch, has 34 lawmakers following the March election, making it the largest in the 150-seat lower house. The pro-European group D66 will be the second largest in the coalition with 24 seats. 

Rutte, who was first elected as prime minister in 2010, will become the Netherlands’s longest-serving prime minister if he sees out his fourth term, eclipsing Ruud Lubbers, who governed for 12 years. He is already the second longest-serving European Union leader, after Hungary’s Viktor Orban. 

Traditionally, the No. 2 party in a Dutch coalition takes the finance ministry, so Christian Democrat Wopke Hoekstra, a budget hardliner, is likely to lose his job as finance minister. That post will most likely be claimed by Sigrid Kaag’s D66, which has advocated closer ties with France and Germany. That change could signal a shift in the Dutch position in crucial EU debates. 

“There will be a different tone and a more open attitude,” on Dutch relations with the EU, Kaag told Bloomberg after the deal was announced in The Hague. Tackling the pandemic or other crises in the future will require “European striking power,” she said. “You can’t continue hiding behind national borders.”

The Dutch historically operate at the hawkish spectrum of the EU with Rutte leading the resistance to the pandemic recovery fund in 2020. D66, in contrast, has supported the idea of euro countries jointly issuing bonds. 

The new government is looking to spend more on the green transition with 35 billion euros ($39.4 billion) earmarked for solar and wind energy, better isolation of houses and electric driving for the next 10 years, according to the agreement. The government also plans to build two new nuclear power plants.

In addition to the green transition, the government pledged to build 100,000 houses ever year, slash nitrogen emissions, cut the costs of day care for lower-income families and boost teachers’ pay checks. The parties agreed to allocate 3 billion euros for tax relief and gradually increase the minimum wage by 7.5%.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.