Immigration key issue as Dutch go to polls

Voters in the Netherlands went to the polls on Wednesday to choose a new government after the resignation of prime minister Mark Rutte in July, bringing an end to his 13 years as leader.

Rutte led four different governments before announcing his exit from politics in the summer, and has been widely tipped as the next chief of NATO.

A disagreement between the four coalition parties in Rutte's last government over how long the children of refugees already in the country should wait to join their families brought down the government and triggered the election, but this policy dispute has helped turn the wider topic of immigration into a key electoral issue.

The outcome is expected to be tight, and parties of the left have called on voters to vote tactically after the Party for Freedom, or PVV, staged a late surge in opinion polls, putting them level with Rutte's center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, known as the VVD.

Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, Rutte's successor as VVD leader, came to the Netherlands as a child refugee from Turkiye. If she is elected, Yesilgoz-Zegerius would be the country's first female prime minister.

The Netherlands has a proportional representation election system, and unlike Rutte, Yesilgoz-Zegerius said she would not necessarily exclude the PVV and its leader Geert Wilders, who has a record of anti-immigrant comments, from coalition talks, which has sounded alarm bells among center and left-wing parties.

Former European commissioner for climate action Frans Timmermans, who now leads a coalition of the left and Green groups, said: "It's clear that Ms Yesilgoz has opened the door for Wilders in the government. This would mean someone participates in running the country who dismisses a million Dutch (Muslims) as second-class citizens."

Rob Jetten, who is head of the centrist Democrats 66 party and was minister for climate and energy policy in Rutte's cabinet, said the VVD had "let the government fall "in the summer "when it could have led migration on to a better path".

Pieter Omtzigt, whose newly-founded New Social Contract party is another major player in the election, has said it would not govern with the "anti-constitutional" PVV.

The Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service said the country received 36,620 asylum applications in 2021, and just under 48,000 in 2022, with most applicants coming from Syria.