The cost of a coalition
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Over seven weeks after the elections, it looks as if Dutch politicians may finally have agreed on a new ruling coalition. Controversially, it seems the minority government will be relying on the support of Geert Wilders' anti-Islam party to push its policy agenda - a deal that will come at a price.
The right-wing VVD - which won the most seats in the June parliamentary elections - has announced plans to form a minority coalition with their fellow right-wing party, the Christian Democrats.
This would produce the first minority government in the Netherlands since the Second World War and means that the prospective coalition needs to find extra backing in order to get its legislation through parliament, and that is where the third largest party, Geert Wilders' Freedom Party, comes in.
The VVD at one time floated the idea of including Wilders' party in the coalition proper, but that plan was scuppered by the Christian Democrats's refusal to set up a formal partnership with a party that openly backs an end to Muslim immigration and wants to ban the Koran in the Netherlands.
The deal now on the table will involve Wilders supporting the minority government in return for certain policy concessions.
In a statement released last Friday, the Freedom Party offered to support the VVD's spending cuts in return for “tough agreements on immigration, integration, asylum, safety and better care for the elderly”.
Analysts are predicting that this government would be "unstable and short-lived" given the level of unease expressed by many of the members of both likely coalition parties about Wilders and his anti-Islam agenda.
