The announcement came as a total surprise in the Second Chamber of The Hague on Monday, July 10, when MPs were due to debate the collapse of the coalition led by liberal Mark Rutte. Three days after precipitating the end of his alliance with three other parties on the migration issue, the prime minister announced that he would no longer be the candidate of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). He will cease to be Prime Minister and leave politics for good.
Questioned after his statement, he declared: "In politics, we sometimes ask ourselves: is all this really useful? A teacher never has to ask himself that question." This was a reference to the fact that, even at the head of various governments since 2010, Rutte has never given up his job as a teacher in a school in The Hague.
On July 7, dozens of curious onlookers had gathered near the Binnenhof, the center of power in The Hague, trying to understand why the liberal Rutte, who in January 2022 took the helm of his fourth government presenting himself as the man of stability, had just precipitated the fall of his coalition after 543 days.
In the evening, at the end of three days of discussions, the four parties making up his coalition parted ways on the grounds of total disagreement over asylum policy. Rutte, who said he was "disappointed," citing "insurmountable" differences with his partners, submitted his government's resignation in writing later that evening. King Willem-Alexander, who had returned from vacation in Greece, spoke with him on Saturday. Elections were scheduled for November.
On Wednesday, the prime minister's unexpected proposal on migration policy set the world on fire. Determined to limit family reunification for refugees, Rutte proposed that people who had fled war – and who, in his opinion, might one day return to their country of origin – should only be able to bring relatives to the Netherlands if they had sufficient financial resources. Exceptions would be made for a maximum of 200 people per month.
Precipitating a return to the polls
"Unacceptable," declared the centrist Protestant party ChristenUnie about this proposal, supported by the left-wing liberals of D66. Together with the Christian Democrats, the fourth component of the government, the ChristenUnie party nevertheless tried to propose a compromise, suggesting a mechanism for temporarily limiting the number of new arrivals. Rutte refused, clearly keen to satisfy the base of his movement, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which has been calling for a stricter migration policy since 2017.
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