AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch Christian Democrats, despite some reservations, voted yesterday in favour of a pact with the Liberals to form a minority coalition government supported by the anti-Islam Freedom Party.
About 68 per cent of 4,033 Christian Democrat members who cast their ballots at a party congress in Arnhem voted for the deal, removing a major obstacle to the formation of the Netherlands’ first post-war minority government.
Earlier this week the Liberals (VVD) and the Freedom Party (PVV) approved the pact, which makes concessions to the PVV’s populist leader Geert Wilders by including the introduction of a ban on the wearing of burkas by Muslim women and tighter immigration rules.
Some leading Christian Democrat (CDA) figures object to the PVV’s far-right agenda and its MPs decided earlier this week to refer the pact to yesterday’s party congress.
Following inconclusive elections in June, the VVD and the CDA hold 52 seats between them in the 150-seat parliament. With support from the PVV they would have a bare majority of 76.
CDA leader Maxime Verhagen told the congress he had considered abandoning talks with the PVV but decided to carry on when he became convinced an agreement was possible.
“So I say ‘yes, let’s do it’, for the CDA and for everyone in the Netherlands,” he said.
Under the pact, radical religious leaders could be barred from entering the country, immigrants convicted of crimes would be expelled more rapidly and those who failed an integration exam would lose their residence permits.