The Netherlands has a special prime minister for the primary time in 14 years as Dutch King Willem-Alexander swore within the nation’s new authorities Tuesday, greater than seven months after elections.
Dick Schoof, former head of the Dutch intelligence company and counterterrorism workplace, signed the official royal decree at Huis Ten Bosch Palace, saying he “declared and promised” to uphold his duties because the nation’s prime minister. The 67-year-old was formally put in alongside 15 different ministers who make up the nation’s right-leaning coalition.
The anti-immigration, anti-Islam social gathering of firebrand Geert Wilders gained the most important share of seats in elections final 12 months nevertheless it took 223 days to type a authorities.
The 4 events within the coalition are Wilders’ Occasion for Freedom, outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right Individuals’s Occasion for Freedom and Democracy, the populist Farmer Citizen Motion and the centrist New Social Contract social gathering. The formal settlement creating the brand new coalition, titled “Hope, braveness and satisfaction,” introduces strict measures on asylum-seekers, scraps household reunification for refugees and seeks to cut back the variety of worldwide college students finding out within the nation.
Opposition from different coalition companions prevented the controversial Wilders from taking the prime minister’s job. Through the monthslong negotiations, he backpedaled on a number of of his most excessive views, together with withdrawing draft laws that might have banned mosques, Islamic colleges and the Quran.
For the primary time since World Struggle II, the Netherlands is now led by a main minister who just isn’t aligned with a political social gathering. Earlier than serving as chief of the nation’s prime intelligence company, Schoof was beforehand the counterterror chief and the pinnacle of the nation’s Immigration and Naturalization Service.