"Hard right" close to taking power in Netherlands (and Europe)

After a decade of swelling anger over mass immigration, housing, and the brutal cost of living, nationalist parties are poised to take power across Europe.

In 2021, countries like Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Belgium were governed by politicians who had led western Europe in the familiar, moderate style that had predominated there since the end of WWII. Upstart nationalists were gaining ground, but were largely excluded from governing coalitions, and seen as troublemakers rather than serious players. It has taken them just four years to go from the margins to the cusp of leading the continent's largest economies. 

Now it is the establishment that is floundering on the brink of irrelevance as populists and nationalists evolve into the first choice for conservatives, angry youth, and those who feel like the traditional parties do not work for them. What started as protest votes have evolved into a permanent political force.

The Dutch will vote this month in a snap election, and the nationalist right will likely once again emerge as the largest force in the country's politics. It has been just two years since the last election in the Netherlands, in which the Party for Freedom (PVV) led by Geert Wilders won the most seats in the Dutch parliament.

The PVV is staunchly nationalist, and defined by opposition to mass immigration and multiculturalism. Following the 2023 election, the PVV formed a rickety government with the other parties on the condition that Mr Wilders would not become prime minister, only for the agreement to collapse earlier this year. 

According to current polls, the once-dominant People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), a moderate centre-right party, is poised for its weakest showing since the 1970s. Electorally, it is hardly a threat to the PVV anymore, whose greatest competition on the right is coming from JA21, another right-wing nationalist party. 

Combined, the PVV and JA21 are projected to win nearly half the seats in the Dutch parliament. In Europe’s proportional electoral systems, where parties must negotiate alliances to have a working majority, attempting to keep those parties out of power in 2025 is a stalling tactic that is delaying the inevitable.

The top issues for voters in the Netherlands are housing, immigration, and health care, with climate change plummeting as a top priority from around 30 per cent of the electorate in 2023, to just about 19 per cent today. Frustrations over migration have burst out of the realm of regular politics, with anti-immigration riots breaking out in The Hague, causing tens of thousands of euros worth of damage to the parliamentary complex there.

In February, Mr Wilders wrote on social media, "The biggest threat is that for decades we have welcomed people from other parts of the world where violence, inequality and lack of freedom dominate, with open borders and mass immigration in Europe, that we have accepted, facilitated and praised the refusal to integrate and adapt to the rules of our own society."

The inability or unwillingness of the EU’s political establishment to meaningfully tackle mass immigration or the cost of living has cost them their legitimacy, as well as the trust of ordinary citizens. Furthermore, the sheer influx of new people via immigration has strained the housing supply of most Dutch cities. Rent hikes and shrinking disposable incomes have been the result, making the Netherlands into one of the most unaffordable countries in Europe. 

A similar set of issues in France has resulted in the mass rejection of the established parties of the left and right. The traditional Gaullist conservatives are edging towards irrelevance, after dominating French politics for much of the 20th century. Disaffected blue-collar workers, young people, and frustrated conservatives have shifted en masse to the National Rally (RN), a right wing nationalist party that has gained in every election since 2007. 

European economies are largely stagnant or declining. A shrinking share of the shrinking pie is being eaten up by more and more people from outside the EU, and voters who feel crowded out on housing, wages, and basic services want politicians who prioritize their interests. 

In Germany, the populist Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) became the second largest party in elections earlier this year, and is now polling first in political surveys. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is on-track to sweep aside both the Labour and Conservative parties, with his party winning city by-elections in previous Labour strongholds like Cardiff.

Wherever populist nationalism rises in Europe, the story is the same. Parties that voters could once trust to manage their economies and societies have not satisfied concerns over immigration and rising expenses of merely living in Europe, and they are paying the price. These are not the gentle, consensus-based politics that defined Europe for so long, but the results of people feeling unheard and neglected. More “consensus” is simply a shield for further decline, and millions of Europeans are not going to reward failure any longer.

This article has been adapted from "Geert Wilders' coming triumph and the end of Europe's mushy centrists", by Geoff Russ, in the National Post (Canada), 2/10/25.

Footnote: "Grenzen dicht!" means "Borders closed!"