Is the Dutch election result bad news for aid?

“Volledige stop op ontwikkelingshulp,” reads the manifesto of the Party for Freedom, or PVV, the surprise far-right winners of this week’s Dutch election — or, translated, a “complete stop on development aid.” The vow lays bare how the bombshell result that has thrust PVV’s notorious anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders to the brink of power in a key European capital has also thrown into jeopardy his country’s status as one the world’s leading donor nations. In 2022, the Netherlands spent $6.5 billion on official development assistance — 0.67% of its gross national income — putting it in 6th place in the league table of the planet’s most generous countries. Now, PVV’s manifesto also promises “No longer a minister for development aid,” underlining the aid revolution envisaged by Wilders. The only recent parallel is the right-wing Sweden Democrats party, which entered a government coalition in 2022, triggering an aid budget cut and a diluted spending target. Even that parallel will be left in the shade if the pledges are carried out. “If” is the crucial word, as the Netherlands is set to enter a furious period of party negotiations to produce a viable government within its system of proportional representation. A stable coalition needs 76 seats in the 150-seat Dutch lower house of Parliament. PVV is nearly halfway to success, having won 37 seats, and will have the first crack at power. But it will need to form a government coalition with other parties, which will influence what shape the pledges will take. The last such talks took a staggering 299 days to complete, suggesting no clarity anytime soon. And even if Wilders is kept out of power or forced to abandon controversial policies to become prime minister, liberal voices are already worrying about the far-right’s next electoral target, the European Parliament polls next June. One of PVV’s senators, Gom van Strien, has been picked as “scout” and tasked with finding out which parties are prepared to work with Wilders ahead of a parliamentary debate on Dec 6. The initial indications are that the Farmer-Citizen Movement will get on board with its seven seats, attention then turning to the New Social Contract party, with 20 seats, and the 24 seats of the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte. VVD’s new Turkish-born leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, has said her party would turn down Cabinet posts but “support” a center-right coalition, potentially propping up a minority government on a case-by-case basis. Of course, the focus is not on Wilders’ stance on international aid but on his extreme anti-immigrant policies — a complete block on asylum claims, with “pushback” of refugees from safe neighboring countries — as well as on his plan to end arm sales to war-ravaged Ukraine. Only last week, the Dutch government earmarked an additional €2 billion ($2.2 billion) in military aid for Kyiv in 2024, taking total support since Russia’s 2022 invasion to around 7.5 billion euros. It has also promised to supply F-16 fighter jets. Wilders seems to have already accepted his need to compromise, stressing he wants to be “prime minister for all Dutch regardless of their religion, sexuality, color, gender or whatever,” and acknowledged that being prime minister is “a different role than when you are leader of the opposition.” Whatever happens, many thoughts are turning to the Brussels elections in just six months and to whether voters will, as in the Netherlands, reward “xenophobic, hard right, populist parties,” as Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at Oxford University, told the BBC. “If this is reproduced in the European elections, then the whole EU will be wrenched sharply to the illiberal right,” Garton Ash said.