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[1\/4]Dutch Prime Minister Rutte arrives at Huis ten Bosch Palace to meet with Dutch King Willem-Alexander in The Hague, Netherlands July 8, 2023. REUTERS\/Piroschka van de Wouw<\/p>\n
THE HAGUE, July 8 (Reuters) – Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte met King Willem-Alexander on Saturday to discuss a caretaker administration, a day after his centre-right government collapsed after a dispute over migration policies.<\/p>\n
Rutte declined to comment on the hour-and-a-half talks after leaving the palace in The Hague.<\/p>\n
“These are confidential meetings,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
The next big step will be to dissolve parliament, but first there will be a government resignation debate in the Dutch lower house scheduled for Monday.<\/p>\n
After the dissolution of parliament, elections will be held, scheduled for November.<\/p>\n
Rutte, 56, in power since 2010, is the longest-serving Dutch prime minister. He said at a news conference on Friday that he would like to run for a fifth term, but would consult with his party before making a final decision.<\/p>\n
The crisis in Dutch politics came after Rutte’s conservative VVD party tried to limit the flow of asylum seekers to the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
Tensions came to a head this week when Rutte demanded support for a proposal to limit the arrival of children of war refugees already in the Netherlands and make families wait at least two years before being able to reunite yes<\/p>\n
This was opposed by the small Christian Union and the liberal D66, which eventually brought down the government.<\/p>\n
As head of state, the king is expected to ask Rutte’s coalition to stay on as a caretaker government until a new administration is formed after the election, a process that in the fractured Dutch political landscape usually takes months .<\/p>\n
Before meeting the king, Rutte tweeted that he had called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to make sure his government’s caretaker status would not affect Dutch support for Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Not since the migration crisis of 2015-2016 has immigration been such a major flaw in European politics.<\/p>\n
Support for Germany’s far-right AfD has surged in the past six months. And in Spain, polls suggest that the far-right Vox party could enter government after this month’s elections.<\/p>\n
In the Netherlands, the migration is somewhat overshadowed by farmers’ protests against government plans to limit nitrogen emissions, which they say will mean the end of many farms.<\/p>\n
The farmers’ protest party BBB became the largest party in the provincial elections in March.<\/p>\n
In the latest Ipsos poll, conducted a week before the government collapsed, Rutte’s VVD was expected to remain the largest party in the 150-seat parliament with 28 seats. But BBB was predicted to increase from a single seat now to 23, making it the second largest.<\/p>\n
BBB also supports stricter immigration policy and has suggested a possible annual cap of 15,000 asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
The Netherlands already has one of the toughest immigration policies in Europe. Still, asylum applications rose by a third last year to more than 46,000, and the government has predicted they could top 70,000 this year, up from the previous peak in 2015.<\/p>\n
Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg and Piroschka van de Wou; Editing by Ros Russell and Mark Potter<\/span><\/p>\n Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.<\/a><\/p>\n