The Dutch government has disbanded after the coalition parties failed in trying to reach agreements on immigration and asylum policy in the country.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has announced that he will hand in his resignation on Saturday to King Willem-Alexander after talks between the four coalition parties on immigration policy failed.
"The decision was very difficult for us. The differences of opinion between the partners in the coalition were irreconcilable. All parties made great efforts to find a solution, but unfortunately it is impossible to bridge the differences regarding immigration," Rutte told reporters. Tim Kujisten, spokesman for the Christian Union party that was in the coalition, added that "the four parties decided that they could not reach an agreement on immigration. That's why they decided to end this government."
Elections will probably take place this November. Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom which opposes Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, called in a tweet on Twitter to hold elections immediately.
According to the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics in the Netherlands, in 2022 at least 21,500 immigrants requested asylum in the Netherlands. The country's immigration centers have become extremely crowded, with some immigrants forced to sleep in rough conditions outside the immigration centers due to the large number of asylum seekers entering the country.
Rutte's party worked to reduce the flow of immigrants entering the Netherlands, but some of the other parties in the coalition opposed this. "Everyone wants to find a good and effective solution that also does justice to the fact that human lives are involved," said Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag, a member of the center party Democrats 66, before the start of the failed talks.