Around 18 months ago....the Dutch had a national election, and what formed up was a four party coalition. What you generally want to develop for coalition situations....is no more than two or three parties. Once you go past that....the odds are pretty good that you will fail at some point.
The WD Party was the winner of the election (center-right, if you asking their 'lean'). So they were going to form a coalition around Christian Unie (center-left), D66 (social liberals, center-left) and Christian Democratic Appeal (center-right).
I should note they have a serious problem in the Parliament having 17 parties with representation (minimum of 1 seat each).
The lead party win? They were only able to get 22-percent, which isn't that much.
How the collapse came? Back in 2022....there was a scandal to break out over Dutch-run aslyum centers in the country, and how crowded they'd become. The VVD Party folks (the lead party in this coalition) had demanded a 'fix' so that the scandal would not occur again.
So for a number of months....VVD kept pushing to have a limit on migrants. This centered on one single aspect....relatives of refugees flowing into the country (yes, it was a pretty limited fix). The VVD limit idea was set at 200 relatives a month to flow in.
Two of the coalition partners said 'no'....they would not support it. At the time, they didn't think that VVD was serious about collapsing the government over this one single issue. Well....they were wrong.
Here's the one single interesting fact that I did see.....at present, the pace of incoming migrants is going to be around 70,000 for 2023....if things continue. This is the highest since 2015. In general, there's a lot of hyped-up feelings in the Netherlands (either for the topic or against the topic).
The exact date for the new election....not yet set, but I would expect it to be in the middle of September.
Broader issues this time? Well....there's this effort by the coalition to shut down several thousand farms in the Netherlands (forced to sell) to save the climate. In farming communities....the VVD Party is trashed. The Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) has taken a lot of support around the country, and probably will take way more votes than in the 2021 election (1-percent at the time). Polls now say that BBB will take around 25-to-27 percent of the vote.....likely winning, with the VVD folks in 2nd place (polls say) at 21 percent.
So who would BBB partner up with? Well....it probably won't be the VVD folks....so this means another four-partner coalition. I should note for 2021's election....that took nine months to form a working group. I tend to think a minimum of six months will be spent on working out an agreement.
The end of the closure of farms effort? Yeah....you can go ahead and speculate that the whole effort that drew massive attention for all of 2022 and the past couple of months....will just disappear.
The refugee business to get more confused? BBB has no problem in accepting refugees from war-zones....beyond that? No....that's a economic situation and less priority. I would guess that no center-left partners will come out of this new coalition.
I should also add that the right-wing party....Party for Freedom (PVV) will likely fit into the coalition in some way....getting a lot of negative criticism from the news media. Their polling presently? Around 13-to-14 percent.
Any of this affecting German politics? Well....various parties in Germany will be looking at things and how public discontent might 'bleed-over' into Germany. One might say this is an election about right-wing and right-of-center voting....getting the idea that the same trend would occur in Germany.
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