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Far-right leader Geert Wilders has quit the Dutch government, plunging the country into political uncertainty.
Wilders, whose Freedom party (PVV) was the biggest in the four-party coalition, said he could no longer support its failure to crack down on asylum applications.
“No signature for our asylum plans, no changes to the main coalition agreement. The PVV is leaving the coalition,” Wilders said on social media on Tuesday.
The Dutch parliament could now try to find a new coalition with a majority or call fresh elections.
The coalition government lasted 11 months and was riven with frequent disputes.
Wilders was thwarted in his desire to be prime minister, with Dick Schoof, a former spy chief who has never held elected office, taking the role.
Wilders last week proposed a 10-point plan to cut migration and demanded that the other leaders sign. It included using the army to patrol the border, closing refugee accommodation centres and sending home many Syrian refugees, arguing that the country is now safe to return to after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last year.
During crisis talks on Monday and Tuesday morning the other three party leaders refused to agree to plans they said were illegal.
Dilan Yesilgöz, leader of the second-biggest coalition party, the liberal VVD, attacked Wilders for “just doing what he wants”. “We had a rightwing majority and he lets it all go for his ego,” she told reporters.
His closest ally, Caroline van der Plas of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, said Wilders was “irresponsible”.
“He has all the trumps in his hand and yet he just pulls the plug,” she told reporters in The Hague.
Wilders’ plan also called for a ban on family members joining refugees who are already in the Netherlands.
Wilders received death threats when he made a film in 2008 that linked the teachings of the Koran to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and other atrocities. Since then, he has lived in a safe house, has a police guard and frequently posts the threats against him online.
Wilders recently posted on X a poll showing that a majority of Dutch people wanted to ban Islam from the country.
Far-right movements around Europe have seized on migration as an issue, performing strongly in Germany, Poland, Austria, Portugal and Romania in elections this year. Ultranationalist Karol Nawrocki was elected president of Poland on Sunday.
