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Wilders in the wilderness: Far-right Dutchman drops PM bid
Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders will not become prime minister of his country, despite getting the most votes in last year’s election.
Although Wilders’ PVV party swept to victory on a scorching anti-Islam and anti-migrant “Dutch First” message, he still needed coalition partners to form a government. Months of talks with a handful of center-right parties ended this week without support for Wilders as PM.
The result prolongs the political uncertainty for the Netherlands, which looks headed for a bizarre “extra-parliamentary cabinet” headed by a technocrat cabinet in which none of the ministers is from the PVV or the other three parties.
On the one hand, the episode is another example of the practical limits for European far-right parties, despite their rising electoral fortunes. (We saw something similar in Portugal last weekend, where the far-right Chega party was sweet at the polls but still too toxic for a coalition.)
But watch closely. Wilders has said he would “like a right-wing cabinet.” Will Wilders, given his obvious popularity, be able to pull policy rightward even from outside the government?
Who will work with Wilders?
That process isn’t going well. Success began looking less likely Tuesday evening when the center-right New Social Contract party announced it would not join a PVV-led government. The NSC’s leader explained that Wilders has made economic promises his party can’t keep, though the NSC also has concerns about the Islamophobic rhetoric that’s central to Wilders’ political brand.
Wilders will continue to try to form a right-wing government. If he fails, the Netherlands might see a Labour-Green alliance that shifts the country’s government to the left. Failing that, they might hold new elections. The talks were supposed to produce a report to parliament before it breaks for recess on Feb. 16, but it’s not clear that deadline can be met.
As in some other European countries – Germany, for example – far-right parties are surging, but few will partner with them to form governments.Dutch voters take hard-right turn: Will more of the EU follow?
Wilders has long promoted anti-Muslim policies, including a ban on Islamic schools, Qurans, mosques, and the wearing of hijab inside government buildings. Wilders has now tempered these pledges, saying he will “continue to moderate” his policies as coalition talks resume on Monday.
Wilders’ Freedom Party is expected to obtain 37 seats in the 150-seat Parliament, which falls short of the 76 needed under the Netherlands’ proportional representation system to secure a majority of seats. He must cement alliances with enough other parties to do so, and his dance card includes the center-right New Social Contract Party, with 20 seats, as well as the right-leaning People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, aka VVV, which formed the previous government, now with 24 seats.
Outgoing VVV Prime Minister Mark Rutte says he will not join Wilders’ coalition but could back a “centre-right” government. NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt said he could not enter a coalition with Wilders unless he recanted the Quran and mosque ban. And Wilders wants to cut EU funding and promised a referendum on membership, while Omtzigt opposes a “Nexit.”
Meanwhile, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán toasted Wilder’s win, saying “The winds of change are here!” Far-right Flemish independence leader Tom Van Grieken, who is leading in the polls for Belgium’s June 2024 elections, also congratulated Wilders, saying “Parties like ours are on their way in the whole of Europe.”
But perhaps the most significant beneficiary could be Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National, who also cheered Wilders’ victory. Rassemblement National is leading opinion polls in France for next June’s elections to the European Parliament, with 28% of the vote compared to 19% for French President Emmanuel Macron’s party and its allies. A shift to the right could reverse the EU’s stand on policies related to climate action, EU reform, and weapons for Ukraine, while also impacting migration policies.
Netherlands votes for first new PM in 13 years
The Dutch head to the polls tomorrow to elect their first new prime minister in over a decade. The election has centered on immigration, living standards, climate change, and how conservative the next government will be.
The election was called after outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right government imploded over how to reduce the flow of migrants to the Netherlands – a polarizing issue collapsing centrist coalitions across Europe.
A majority of voters support right-leaning parties. Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party, or PVV, made last-minute gains to take a lead the polls. Wilders has built his career on barring Muslim asylum-seekers from the Netherlands, and his rhetoric has gained traction since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius – another frontrunner from the current PM’s party – is also running on reducing immigration in order to limit the war’s security risks to European countries.
The results are still too close to call. As of this week, 63% of voters remained undecided. Left-wing parties are urging their supporters to strategically vote centrist to block a PVV-led government. Accordingly, Wilders moderated his stances in the last debate, which may have contributed to his last-minute gains.
But the real fun starts after the votes are counted: None of the candidates are expected to get more than 20% of the vote, so the parties must decide what compromises they are willing to make to form a government.
If a hard right coalition is formed, they would seek to radically restrict immigration. A centrist government would follow through on the previous government's plans to increase social spending and renewable energy. A left-wing coalition, meanwhile, would raise taxes on the wealthy and supercharge the adoption of the EU’s green deal that its likely leader, Frans Timmermans, spearheaded as EU climate commissioner.The Graphic Truth: How much it costs to supply Ukraine
As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, proponents of continued military aid to Kyiv say it’s a cut-rate investment for security while others wonder whether the cost is worth it. We look at how much the biggest suppliers spent on military aid to Ukraine as a percentage of their defense budgets last year.
Biden enlists Japan & Netherlands to fight US-China chips war
Japan and the Netherlands have reportedly agreed to join US export controls to stop China from getting the machines to make some of the world’s most advanced semiconductors — in part, the Biden administration claims, to make high-tech weapons. It's a major milestone in the broader US push to beat China in the race to dominate global tech with "weapons" such as the $52 billion CHIPS Act, which aims to subsidize domestic chipmaking in America and make it harder for China to access the tech.
We learn more from Eurasia Group's senior analyst Nick Reiners.
Why is this a big deal?
Until this point, the US was alone on the world stage in its campaign to deny China access to key technologies. It is quite a novel thing to take this approach to geopolitical competition. There are existing multilateral export control mechanisms like the Wassenaar Arrangement, but they don't really work anymore — not least because Russia is a member. So the US went out unilaterally and took all these measures.
The US has wanted to bring on key countries like Japan and the Netherlands before. But in the end, it decided to go it alone to prove it had skin in the game, and it wasn't clear that it would gain the buy-in from other key countries. Now, finally, Washington has two very important countries to sign on to its approach of denying China access to semiconductors used for artificial intelligence and other high-tech applications.
Why are the Dutch and Japanese so crucial to the US effort, and why are they coming on board?
In particular, the Netherlands has one company, ASML, that makes something called Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography machines, or EUV machines, which churn out the world's most advanced chips, as well as Deep Ultraviolet Lithography, which are less advanced than EUV machines but still extremely complex. Japan also has important chipmaking firms, including Tokyo Electron and Nikon.
Fundamentally, the governments of the two countries agree with the principles underlying America's actions and that China is a security threat. They agree that China is a geopolitical adversary and that it's worthwhile to try to reduce its access to high tech.
At the same time, the US can threaten Japan and the Netherlands because the global chip supply chain is so complex and integrated that pretty much any product relies in some way on US technology. So, the US has the ability to deny ASML or Tokyo Electron access to key components that are required to build these machines in the first place. Under the Trump administration, the message was: If you don't sign here on the dotted line, then we might be forced to take more aggressive measures. But it’s unlikely that Biden administration officials have made an explicit threat like that.
Does this have anything to do with the CHIPS Act passed last year by the Biden administration?
There is certainly a link. The legislation contains what's called guardrails, meaning that if companies get US subsidies, they're not allowed to invest in certain types of projects in China. The overall objective is similar to ensuring that investments in the semiconductor sector are made within the US and allied countries — and certainly not in China. That's part of this broader "friend-shoring" trend that we hear a lot about.
What's all the fuss about EUV machines?
Chips are cut out of silicon wafers, big circles made of silicon. What lithography machines do is, in simple terms, use light to cut microscopic grooves in the wafers. The tech allows you to print these unbelievably tiny patterns to make circuits. The smaller the grooves, the more transistors you can cram onto each chip, and the more powerful the chip becomes. EUV machines are a piece of the most advanced tech in human existence, a triumph of human engineering. And only one company in the world makes them: ASML.
Didn’t the Dutch government ban exporting EUV machines to China in 2019?
Yes, but it's impossible to know whether the Chinese have gotten hold of one, even if they're they're not supposed to. ASML has not sold them any, but there is no doubt that China is seeking access to these machines through other means.
And can't China build its own EUV machines?
That would be an immensely complex engineering feat that requires thousands of components and human capital from all over the world. It took 20 years for ASML to build EUV machines. China will certainly try, but it'll likely take them 10 years or more — if they ever achieve it at all.
It sounds as hard as building a nuclear bomb …
I'd say it would be even harder, based on the sheer complexity and the number of components and how perfect everything has to be for it to work correctly.
Even if China is not allowed to have EUV machines anyway, Japan and the Netherlands joining US export controls still hurts Beijing. But how?
This is part of a broader strategy to make life as difficult as possible for the Chinese tech sector and to make the technological gap between the US and China as wide as possible. And because China is heavily dependent on semiconductor imports, the West in general — and the US in particular — has a point of leverage that it can exert on China very asymmetrically.
That said, I'm dubious about the US claim that China might use these semiconductors in their weapons because, for instance, Beijing doesn't need the latest chips to make most of its missiles. It can easily get hold of enough of these chips one way or another, even if it doesn’t produce them all domestically.
If it's not really about weapons, then why does America want to stop China from getting its hands on these state-of-the-art chips?
The US and China are in a race to develop the most powerful AI applications and the most powerful high-performance computers, which themselves can be used for military purposes — for example, designing advanced weapon systems. And for that, you need vast quantities of chips, so what the US and its allies are doing delays China.
Moreover, the US increasingly sees less and less of a distinction between China's military and civilian economies. This week, the Biden administration reportedly banned pretty much all US companies from selling any US-made tech to Huawei, which Washington sees as an agent of Beijing. Crippling Huawei's civilian business is a way to hurt China because the company also works for the military.
How might China respond?
In general, they haven't tended to respond in a symmetrical way. To a certain degree, the export controls are kind of convenient to Xi Jinping because they reinforce the need for China to become self-sufficient. China is also trying to present itself around the world as being a more responsible global stakeholder compared to the US by not weaponizing interdependencies and so on, which is, of course, very dubious. But that's their public-facing rhetoric.
China can retaliate in other ways that maybe aren't directly linked. For example, they could stop cooperating with the US on things like climate change. They could downgrade diplomatic relations in other ways, and they can also make life difficult for US companies and Western companies by not approving corporate mergers. Or they can encourage Chinese consumers not to buy Western goods. That might sound kind of soft and nudging, but the effects can still be very damaging to Western companies trying to do business in China.
Would any other countries sign up, too? Perhaps South Korea?
Right now, South Korea is the other big one because it has Samsung, but the South Koreans are also a bit of a special case because they are much more exposed to China and its companies, as well as the North Korean issue. South Korea is just generally more vulnerable to China and Chinese pressure. That's partly why the so-called Chip4 Alliance — which was supposed to include the US, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea — hasn’t yet really gotten off the ground. I wouldn't bet on South Korea joining anytime soon.What We're Watching: Anti-lockdown protests turn violent in Europe
Europe anti-lockdown protests get violent. Pockets of unrest spread across Europe in recent days as tens of thousands gathered in several cities across the continent to protest government measures aimed at curbing a fast-spreading wave of COVID-19. Violent clashes broke out between demonstrators and police in The Hague and Rotterdam where Dutch cops opened fire at an increasingly aggressive crowd protesting the tightening of restrictions. Meanwhile, more that 35,000 people turned out in Brussels, while large crowds rocked Vienna, protesting fresh lockdowns that initially targeted only the unvaccinated, as well as new vaccine mandates. The state of the pandemic in Europe is not good. Germany recorded more than 48,000 new cases Sunday, the highest on record, prompting new lockdowns in the lead-up to Christmas, while deaths across the continent are also rising since the summer months, though they remain well below pre-vaccine levels. What's more, far-right groups, like Austria's Freedom Party, are taking advantage of COVID fatigue and anti-vaxx sentiment to encourage people to defy government rules and sow chaos.
After Merkel, who leads Europe?
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Europe:
Who's going to be the leading voice politician in Europe after Angela Merkel leaves?
Well, that remains to be seen. First, we need to wait for the outcome of the German election, and then it's going to take quite some time to form a government in Germany to see who's going to be chancellor. And then of course we have elections coming up in France in the spring. Macron is likely to win, but you never know. So by next summer, we'll know more about that. And then there are other personalities there. There's Mario Draghi, prime minister of Italy, who has a strong personality. Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, as long as he's there. So it's going to take quite some time for this to be sorted out.
What did Boris Johnson achieve during his visit to the United States?
Well, I think his number one priority at the moment must be to mobilize broader international support for climate efforts. He is the host of the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow in November. That must be a success and I hope that he makes further progress in that direction during his days in the United States.