The Dutch Electoral Council declared Rob Jetten the winner of last week’s election on Friday, setting the 38-year-old centrist on course to become the country’s youngest-ever prime minister.
According to the council, Jetten won by a razor-thin margin of 29,668 votes over anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders in an election viewed as a bellwether for the development of Europe’s far right.
“I think we’ve now shown to the rest of Europe and the world that it is possible to beat the populist movements if you campaign with a positive message for your country,” he told AFP last Friday.
Jetten will need to form a coalition to lead the EU’s fifth-largest economy, which could take months.
In the Dutch political system, no single party has enough seats to govern alone, so compromise and negotiation are essential.
Jetten’s D66 centrists won 26 seats, the lowest-ever number for an election winner, while the far-right PVV led by Wilders also has 26 seats.
Although Wilders lost 11 seats after his surprise election victory in 2023, the far right remained powerful in the Netherlands.
The far-right Forum for Democracy increased its seat count from three to seven, while the hard-right JA21 gained nine seats from one in the 2023 election.
Jetten prefers a four-party coalition that includes representatives from all sides of the political spectrum.
He intends to collaborate with the center-right CDA (18 seats), the right-wing liberal VVD (22 seats), and the left-wing Green/Labour coalition (20 seats).
That would give him a commanding 86-seat majority, but VVD leader Dilan Yesilgoz has ruled out forming a coalition with Greens and Labour.
Her preference is for a right-wing alliance of the CDA, JA21, and Jetten’s D66. That would have precisely 75 seats, making it potentially unstable.
Another option is a minority coalition, which Jetten has stated is not his desire.
A so-called “scout” attempts to bridge the gap by determining which parties are willing to collaborate.
Jetten nominated Wouter Koolmees, head of the national rail company NS, as scout to lead the negotiations. He is scheduled to update his progress on Tuesday.
Wilders has reluctantly acknowledged defeat, praising Jetten while simultaneously making unfounded charges of election irregularities on social media.
“The results of this election are reliable,” said Electoral Council Chairman Wim Kuijken.
“In the Netherlands, there is a well-thought-out, robust procedure for voting and declaring the results,” said Kuijken.
According to Kuijken, the number of counting errors has fallen to roughly 8,000 from 14,000 in 2021.
“The Electoral Council concludes that, during all the steps taken in the election process, no irregularities occurred that could give rise to doubts about the reliability of the election results,” said Kuijken.
Wilders has offered to join the coalition, but all mainstream parties ruled out collaborating with him before the poll.
The firebrand politician precipitated the emergency election, resigning from his PVV party after arguing progress was too sluggish to adopt the “strictest immigration policy ever.”
