Mark Rutte, Netherlands Prime Minister, Says He Will Depart Politics

Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Netherlands’s longest-serving prime minister, stated on Monday that he would step apart as his get together’s chief and could be leaving politics within the coming months after his governing coalition collapsed final week.

Mr. Rutte got here to energy in 2010 and earned the identify “Teflon Mark” for his capability to climate political storms, however the failure of the 4 events in his coalition to return to an settlement on the nation’s migration insurance policies set the stage for elections within the fall.

The chief of the Folks’s Get together for Freedom and Democracy, Mr. Rutte, 56, stays in control of a caretaker authorities.

“This isn’t totally with out emotion,” he informed reporters, according to the broadcaster NOS. “However it feels good to go the baton.”

Caroline van der Plas, chief of the Farmer-Citizen Motion, a pro-farmer get together that swept native elections within the Netherlands this 12 months, stated that she welcomed the prospect for voters to go to the polls this fall. Attje Kuiken, chief of the Labor Get together, stated on Twitter this weekend that “Mark Rutte is finished governing.”

Mr. Rutte’s coalition collapsed after he did not persuade the extra centrist members of his coalition to again extra restrictive migration insurance policies, an indication of the efficiency of that challenge in European politics.

The federal government had been negotiating the phrases of household reunification for refugees and in addition whether or not to create two lessons of asylum: a short lived one for individuals fleeing conflicts, and a everlasting one for individuals fleeing persecution.

The aim of each proposals was to cut back the variety of refugees, a mirrored image of the need to move off right-wing events exterior the coalition who’ve been making political inroads by tapping into voter issues about immigration.

The opposite coalition events have been able to comply with the two-tier asylum system, however they’d not endorse Mr. Rutte’s proposal for a two-year ready interval earlier than refugees already dwelling within the Netherlands may very well be joined by their youngsters.

That deadlock finally led Mr. Rutte to supply the resignation of his authorities to King Willem-Alexander in writing on Friday evening.

It is a growing story. Please test again for updates.