European Election

Dutch left-wing parties gain support while Wilders also wins seats

Immigration and healthcare the dominant themes as voters turn out in highest numbers for EU election since 1989

Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, is predicted to win seven seats in the European elections. Photograph: Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images

Peter Cluskey in The Hague
Sun Jun 9 2024 - 18:48

Dutch voters swung to the right in support of Geert Wilders’s anti-immigration Freedom Party in Thursday’s European Parliament elections, but not by enough to prevent a win by left-wing parties, Labour and GreenLeft, by just two seats.

An exit poll on Thursday showed the left with eight of the 31 seats and Mr Wilders with seven. However, because the poll had a margin of error of about one seat, revised figures which emerged when polling closed across the EU on Sunday knocked the Freedom Party back to six.

Compared to November’s general election in which Mr Wilders had a substantial win, support for the left-wing parties was up from 16 to almost 22 per cent, while support for the four parties of the recently formed right-leaning coalition was down from 56.3 to 38.5 per cent.

That was attributed to resistance to the EU in each of the new coalition parties. For example, 56 per cent of Freedom Party supporters did not vote, and, more surprisingly, that figure rose to 59 per cent in the case of Pieter Omtzigt’s New Social Contract, said the polling company, Ipsos.

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Despite that resistance, there was substantial engagement at the ballot box. National turnout was 47 per cent, up five percentage points on 2019 and the highest in a European election since 1989 – with immigration and healthcare the dominant themes.

“We can see from this result that the parties that have opted for a stronger Europe have done well despite dire warnings about the rise of nationalism – so Europe is alive”, declared Frans Timmermans, former EU vice-president and leader of Labour-GreenLeft alliance.

“It’s also a clear signal from the Dutch people to the rest of Europe: you can count on us when the time comes to work together to resolve the many difficult common problems we face.”

Mr Wilders failed to take a single seat in 2019, though the Freedom Party was allocated one in the distribution of UK seats after Brexit. However, it won five seats in 2011.

In that context his haul of six this time was another substantial win on top of his general election victory. He hailed the result as “our best ever” and “a sign to the elites in Brussels that things will change.”

“This makes clear what Dutch voters want”, he told reporters. “They want a different European Union – and a stronger nation state.”

The Netherlands will have 31 seats in the new European Parliament, five more than before Brexit.

Apart from Labour-GreenLeft and the Freedom Party on eight and six seats respectively, the centre-right VVD is expected to take four, the Christian Democrats and D66 three each, and the “citizen-farmer party”, BBB, two.

As the new parliament emerges, Mr Wilders – whose party is currently part of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group – said he would like to be part of a single right-wing group featuring Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her deputy Matteo Salvini, whose parties are currently in different European Parliament groups.

“If it were possible to form a broader group, I’d be interested in joining them”, he told a rally.

Peter Cluskey

Peter Cluskey

Peter Cluskey is a journalist and broadcaster based in The Hague, where he covers Dutch news and politics plus the work of organisations such as the International Criminal Court

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