Netherlands: Wilders Wins, Schoof Governs & a Eurosceptic Shift

The November 2023 Dutch general elections produced a result that shocked the Netherlands and reverberated across Europe. Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom (PVV) — a one-man party in the legal sense, with Wilders as its only formal member — won 37 of 150 seats in the House of Representatives, making it the largest party by a significant margin. The Dutch political system, which is highly proportional and typically produces coalition governments of three or four parties, then required months of complex negotiations to form a workable government. Wilders himself was deemed too controversial by the other prospective coalition partners (VVD, the centre-right liberal party; NSC, a new Christian-democratic party; and BBB, the agricultural protest movement) to become Prime Minister. Instead, Dick Schoof — a retired former director-general of the Dutch domestic intelligence service AIVD — was appointed as a neutral, technocratic PM figure in July 2024.

The Schoof government has pursued an agenda that reflects Wilders's priorities in several key areas despite Wilders not formally holding a cabinet position. On migration, the government has taken the hardest line in recent Dutch history: attempting to invoke a rare opt-out from EU asylum obligations, implementing stricter border controls, and proposing significant reductions in refugee reception capacity. On climate, the government has moved to slow or roll back several of the nitrogen emission reduction targets that had been devastating for Dutch farmers — the political grievance that gave rise to the BBB in the first place. On foreign aid, the government has made significant cuts. These positions have created tensions with EU partners and with the European Commission.

Wilders himself remains the coalition's most powerful and unpredictable figure. Operating as a parliamentary floor leader rather than a minister, he uses the threat of withdrawing PVV support from the coalition to shape government policy from outside the cabinet. His political brand — built over two decades on anti-Islam rhetoric, Euroscepticism, and populist economic nationalism — has proven durable despite (or because of) his permanent police protection, his party's unusual legal structure, and his criminal conviction for incitement in 2016 (he was convicted but received no punishment). The PVV joined Orbán's Patriots for Europe EP group after the 2024 European Parliament elections, aligning the Netherlands formally with the EU's most disruptive right-wing bloc.

The Netherlands' shift to the right is particularly significant in EU terms because of the country's historical role as a pillar of European integration. The Netherlands was a founding member of the EU, home to several EU institutions including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court (both in The Hague), and was consistently in the camp of the "frugal four" — the northern EU states (Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Denmark) that pushed for fiscal discipline and resisted large EU transfer payments to southern member states. Dutch MEPs have historically been heavily represented in the liberal Renew Europe group (VVD) and the EPP.

Under the Schoof/Wilders government, the Netherlands is moving from the pro-integration frugal camp toward a harder Eurosceptic position. The PVV's membership in the Patriots for Europe EP group formally aligns part of the Dutch parliamentary delegation with Orbán. The government's attempts to opt out of EU asylum rules — which the European Commission has rejected as legally impossible under current treaty frameworks — represent a significant challenge to the EU's common asylum system. NATO's headquarters remain in Brussels but the Netherlands hosts several NATO agencies and has historically been a strong Atlantic alliance supporter, a position the Schoof government has maintained on Ukraine even as it cuts general foreign aid.

The Netherlands under the Schoof/Wilders government occupies a complicated position in relation to the Trump administration. On one hand, PVV's populist nationalism and anti-immigration agenda are ideologically aligned with Trumpism, and Wilders has been openly admiring of Trump for years. On the other hand, the Netherlands is deeply embedded in the EU's trade, regulatory, and security structures in ways that create immediate tensions with Trump's tariff agenda. The Netherlands is one of the most trade-dependent economies in Europe — the port of Rotterdam is the EU's largest — making it disproportionately exposed to US tariff escalation. The Schoof government has had to navigate between ideological affinity with Trump and concrete Dutch economic interests that require a strong EU trade negotiating stance.

On NATO, the Netherlands has been a strong Atlantic alliance supporter historically, and the Schoof government has maintained this despite PVV's Eurosceptic leanings. The Netherlands hosts NATO's Allied Air Command at Ramstein and has significant defense infrastructure. Defense spending increased toward the 2% target under pressure from both Trump and the Russian threat to Baltic security. The Dutch relationship with Washington is thus functionally strong at the military level even as the political relationship is complicated by PVV's ties to the European far right and by Dutch economic exposure to trade conflict.

Geert Wilders and the PVV represent the furthest-advanced case in Western Europe of a far-right populist party achieving governing power. The PVV won 37 seats (of 150) in the November 2023 Dutch elections — the largest single-party result — and its policy priorities now drive the government's agenda on migration, climate, and EU relations, even though Wilders himself does not hold a cabinet seat. This is the culmination of a 20-year political journey: Wilders founded PVV in 2006 after breaking from the VVD, and has since transformed Dutch politics by dragging the debate on Islam, immigration, and national identity from the political fringe to the center.

The PVV's governing experiment has produced the most turbulent period in modern Dutch coalition politics. The government's attempt to invoke an opt-out from EU asylum obligations was rejected by the European Commission as legally incompatible with treaty obligations. Plans for the strictest migration caps in Dutch history have faced legal challenges. Within the coalition, NSC's Pieter Omtzigt — whose voters were attracted by his anti-corruption, rule-of-law platform — has repeatedly clashed with PVV's more authoritarian tendencies. Yet the coalition survives, because the alternatives require either new elections (which no coalition partner wants) or an SPD-style cordon sanitaire against PVV (which would require opposition parties to form a majority without the largest party — mathematically possible but politically difficult). The PVV's polling at 25–28% shows Wilders has not lost his base despite the governing turbulence.