The great winner of the provincial elections in the Netherlands has been the Peasant-Citizen Movement (BBB, for its acronym in Dutch), a populist party of recent creation that arose from the indignation of the rural world by the environmental policy of the Government.
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The BBB’s success in Wednesday’s vote, which will determine the composition of the Senate, is a heavy blow to incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s four-party coalition. A vote that calls into question the government’s ability to pass key laws, including measures to drastically reduce nitrogen emissions.
“It has clearly been shown in the Netherlands that we are fed up with these policies,” Caroline van der Plas, a former agricultural journalist and founder of the BBB, told NOS public radio and television. “This is not just about nitrogen, it is about citizens who are not seen, heard and not taken seriously,” she added.
Van der Plas, who founded the party four years ago, said the party is “willing to talk to everyone” and that the movement cannot “continue to be ignored any longer.” “The Hague train keeps rolling, let’s stop it,” he said.
With nearly 90% of the votes counted, the BBB has secured a 19% vote share. According to estimates, that percentage will be enough to obtain 15 of the 75 seats in the Senate when the members of the provincial assemblies elect their new representatives in the Upper House at the end of May.
A difficult mandate for Rutte
The new BBB party will thus become the main bloc in the Upper House. The Labor (PvdA) and Green Left (Groenlinks) parties are expected to win another 15 senators between them. The forecast for the parties that make up Rutte’s coalition is to go from a total of 32 seats to 24.
Rutte, who has governed the Netherlands since 2010, congratulated Van der Plas, but said Thursday that the result does not represent a threat to the government. “I think the cabinet can remain stable in the next few years because we have parties that want to take responsibility,” he said.
However, it is a result that, to say the least, will seriously complicate the remainder of his mandate. In principle, the conservative leader Rutte could resort to the PvdA/Green Left alliance to achieve a majority in the Senate with which to approve new laws. In practice, the two parties have already said they will block the entire climate program of the governing coalition unless it increases its ambition and speed. For example, they want to end subsidies to fossil fuel-based industry and have all coal-fired power plants shut down in two years.
The environmental issue
Rutte’s task is likely to be even more complicated in the 12 provincial assemblies, which are tasked with putting the government’s environmental plans into action. In 5 of those 12 assemblies the BBB has been the first force. In some cases, with voting percentages higher than 30%.
To halve nitrogen emissions by 2030, the Dutch government has set out to buy land from farmers and cut livestock numbers by up to a third. Nitrogen levels in soil and water in the Netherlands, the world’s second largest agricultural exporter, exceed the maximum levels set by the EU.
Despite the severe housing crisis, several construction projects have also been halted over the same problem, with courts ruling in favor of environmental groups calling on the government to reduce emissions and conserve nature rather than grant new building permits. The BBB, which has won the support of populist and far-right parties around the world, argues that the problem is being exaggerated and farmers’ livelihoods put at risk by the ecological transition.
The elections are also a demonstration of how variable the fortunes of populist parties can be. The far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD), led by Thierry Baudet, had obtained almost 15% of the vote in the 2019 provincial elections. However, its share of the vote has plummeted this week to Number 3%.
Translation by Francisco de Zárate