The Netherlands has swung back toward the political centre after nearly two years under Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party (PVV) — signalling that voters may be tiring of his polarising approach to migration and governance.
The centrist liberal Democrats 66 (D66), led by Rob Jetten, emerged as the biggest winner in Wednesday’s parliamentary elections, projected to secure 26 seats. Jetten, 38, is now expected to lead coalition talks and could become the country's youngest-ever prime minister.
Wilders’ stunning victory in 2023, powered by his anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric, upended Dutch politics. But this year’s campaign showed a recalibration: much of the migration debate he ignited has since moved into the mainstream, with parties forced to present concrete solutions. Housing, meanwhile, has eclipsed migration as voters’ top concern.
“A lot of parties share the view that the process, the policies, as they currently are, are not working... That we need to get more of a handle on migration,” Barbara Vis, a professor of politics and governance at Utrecht University, told The Parliament. “But the way they want to do that and what is and is not considered to be still viable, there's a huge difference there.”
A Dutch centrist reset
In a bid to position itself as a liberal alternative to the far-right, D66, the winning party, sharpened its stance on migration over the campaign, calling for stricter controls, asylum processing outside the EU, and stronger integration efforts. That reframing appears to have paid off.
“What D66 tried to do is to broaden the discussion a bit more while at the same time announcing also the necessity of strict policy measures,” Myrthe Wijnkoop, a team leader at the Dutch Refugee Council, told The Parliament. “For example, they also take on the political framing of externalisation being a solution for the global refugee issue That's the difference with two years ago.”
Speaking to jubilant supporters on election night in Leiden, Jetten declared, “Millions of Dutch people have turned a page. They have said goodbye to the politics of negativity, of hate, of ‘it can’t be done.’”
Neck and neck results, but Jetten ahead
Wednesday’s vote was the Netherlands’ third parliamentary elections in five years, after Wilders pulled PVV from the governing coalition in June over disagreements on migration.
“No signature for our asylum plans. No changes to the [coalition] agreement. PVV is leaving the coalition,” Wilders posted on X.
Coalition governments are the norm in the Netherlands. Over the last decade, each government has had a minimum of four parties governing together. Thursday morning’s exit polls showed a razor-thin margin, with only about 2,000 votes between D66 and the PVV, with both projected to win 26 seats.
Yet Jetten is best positioned to form a government, likely alongside the Labour(PvdA)-GreenLeft of former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, Dilan Yeşilgöz's conservative liberals, and a revitalised Christian Democrat CDA. A majority requires 76 seats.
But forming that coalition won’t be smooth sailing. Though a coalition with Labour, the conservative liberal and the CDA is the “preference of D66,” said Vis, the conservative liberals have repeatedly ruled out working with the left.
“They, together with the Christian Democrats, are key players in the sense that it seems impossible to form a coalition also without them,” added Vis.
Most of the 27 parties in the race have also ruled out partnering again with Wilders, with leaders across the political spectrum branding him unreliable, unpredictable and untrustworthy.
Housing and migration dominate the debate
As across much of Europe, the Dutch campaign revolved around two intertwined crises: housing and migration.
The Netherlands faces an acute housing shortage — 400,000 homes in a country of just 18 million — driven by a lack of buildable land, costly materials, and strict environmental rules. That scarcity has fuelled resentment over migration, which Wilders successfully weaponised in 2023.
“When it really comes down to the political debates in a campaign and election time, it's still the asylum seekers who are refugees who are the scapegoats of everything that's going wrong in the Netherlands and it seems hard to get away from that,” said Wijnkoop.
Jetten has sought to change that tone. After violent anti-immigration protests erupted in The Hague in September, he urged reflection on “the impact of the increasingly hard language and politics on the mood in society.”
While Wilders and his allies continue to blame asylum seekers for the housing crisis, that framing overlooks the role of labour migration (which makes up around 3% of the Netherlands’ GDP) and makes up a significant portion of new arrivals, particularly in sectors like agriculture, logistics, and construction.
“What Wilders tries to do in debate is say, ‘it’s about housing, but if only asylum seekers were no longer coming in, then we would have enough houses for everyone,’” said Tom Louwerse, a political scientist at Leiden University, who spoke to The Parliament on Wednesday. “It’s been shown time and time again that the housing issue is a much bigger issue than that.”
However, Louwerse notes the tone of this year’s campaign was more balanced. “Compared to the last time round, migration is still a key issue, but somewhat less dominant. Where last time it was almost only about migration, now it was more varied, with housing and healthcare also high on the agenda.”
EU and Dutch migration clash
Jetten’s victory offers Brussels relief after years of uncertainty under Wilders, who once threatened to pull the Netherlands out of the EU.
The D66 leader has proposed a major overhaul of the Dutch asylum system, advocating a “Canadian model” where asylum applications would be processed outside EU borders and independent arrivals to the Netherlands would be denied entry.
But Jetten’s ideas could still clash with the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact, which guarantees access, procedural rights, and fair distribution of asylum seekers across member states.
As with other EU member states, the Netherlands has until June 2026 to implement the pact. But in the meantime, Wijnkoop notes, we’ll have overlapping legal systems. “It's really going to create chaos,” he said.
Still, and across the continent, from Brussels to Berlin, there should be a collective sigh of relief that one of Europe’s founding democracies has edged back toward the political middle. It’s a reminder that the European project, though strained, still has gravity.
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