Dutch prime minister resigns over migration policy deadlock

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has resigned after his coalition government was unable to reach an agreement on the country’s migration policy. 

The Netherlands’s government said in a post on its website that Rutte tendered the resignation of all ministers and state secretaries to King Willem-Alexander, who requested that Rutte and the other officials continue to carry out their responsibilities in a caretaker capacity until new elections can be held. 

Rutte, who has served as prime minister since 2010 and is the longest-serving premier in the country’s history, is meeting with the king on Saturday to discuss the government’s resignation, according to the post. 

“It is no secret that the coalition partners have very different views on migration policy,” Rutte told reporters in The Hague. “And today, unfortunately, we have to draw the conclusion that those differences are irreconcilable.” 

The coalition government was made up of four political parties — Rutte’s conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, the Christian Democrats and the centrist D66 and Christian Union parties. The former two support stricter regulations on migration, while the latter two do not. 

Rutte presided over late-night meetings on Wednesday and Thursday in a last-ditch effort to reach a deal on migration, but the parties decided unanimously on Friday that they could not agree and must end the coalition. 

The coalition had been trying for months to reach a deal. Proposals that had been rejected included the creation of two classes of asylum, one temporary for those fleeing conflicts and one permanent for those fleeing persecution, and cutting the number of family members allowed to join asylum-seekers in the Netherlands, a country of 18 million people. 

Hundreds of asylum-seekers were forced to sleep outdoors in poor conditions at an overcrowded reception center last year with the number of people arriving outpacing the number of available beds. 

Rutte’s government had called for a law to compel municipalities to provide accommodations for newly arrived asylum-seekers, but the country’s parliament has not approved it yet. 

The coalition formed in January 2022 after the longest negotiations in Dutch political history. 

Similar discussions on migration are taking place throughout Europe with many migrants fleeing conflict or seeking a better life coming from North Africa. Hundreds of thousands have also fled the war in Ukraine. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.