As Geert Wilders brings down the coalition, Amsterdam breathes a sigh of relief
Amsterdam-Oost is precisely the kind of neighbourhood that unsettles Geert Wilders, the populist leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV). It is multicultural, mixed-income and on the up. But when the Netherlands’ four-party coalition collapsed on Tuesday, prompted by Wilders’ withdrawal from the government, this diverse eastern district was not perturbed. In an area that’s home to people of more than 100 nationalities and where the PVV won less than 10 per cent of the vote in 2023, life along Javastraat carried on as usual.
The coalition’s collapse came after the Dutch government refused to heed Wilders’ demands for a draconian asylum plan, which included border troops and a halt to new refugee accommodation. Upon being refused, he walked. The coalition had always been fragile – prime minister Dick Schoof, appointed last July to steady the ship, resigned shortly after.
Recent polls have placed the PVV at second or third place, which is normally enough to secure a spot around the coalition table. But not this time: though Wilders continues to command support outside major cities, Dutch politicians are troubled by his unreliability. So he has returned to the role that suits him best: outsider in chief.
Javastraat was once a working-class area full of Turkish bakeries and North African grocers but is now also home to minimalist cafés serving iced lattes. A barista sums up the mood with typical Dutch bluntness. “Wilders is a toddler and now we all have to clean up his mess,” he says. Relief, mingled with disbelief, defined the day: relief that the coalition has finally crumbled and disbelief that it lasted this long.
Yet the optics are awkward. In less than three weeks’ time, the Netherlands will host the Nato summit in The Hague under a caretaker government. Former prime minister Mark Rutte, whose resignation led to the formation of this coalition, now serves as Nato’s secretary-general. As one Dutch commentator noted, the country risks looking less like a stable partner in the Atlantic alliance than “a butler to a once-noble family fallen into decline”.
The Netherlands will vote in a national election for the ninth time this century on 29 October; in Europe, only Bulgaria has held more. The famously pragmatic Dutch just sigh, climb on their bicycles and carry on. Despite the PVV’s polling numbers, its leader’s credibility as a coalition partner has eroded. The likely outcome? Another centrist, multiparty government – a familiar Dutch solution and one that will quietly end this populist experiment. But Javastraat’s tepid relief is indicative of a world where Wilders’ rhetoric is not going anywhere. The street absorbs the chaos and adapts, quietly sweeping up the pieces left behind by a would-be strongman gone brittle.
Stefan de Vries is a journalist and regular Monocle contributor based in Amsterdam. For more from the Dutch capital, read our interview with its mayor, Femke Halsema, who talks sex, drugs and tourism.
