![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/01C-netherlands-government.jpg\")
Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV, speaking in the Dutch parliament in February 2026. Photograph by John Beckmann\/DeFodi Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\nGeert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV, speaking in the Dutch parliament in February 2026. Photograph by John Beckmann\/DeFodi Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Geert Wilders\u2019 party promised the toughest asylum regime ever and blamed migrants for the housing crisis. The government collapsed within a year \u2014 but its politics did not disappear<\/p>\n
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When Mujahid Ali came to the Netherlands<\/a> in 2023, he imagined an open-minded country. A Syrian national, he was one of 38,000<\/a> people who applied for asylum in 2023, 13,000 of whom were Syrian. \u201cI thought for years it was good there, that the Netherlands is for everyone, not just Dutch people,\u201d says the 28-year-old.\u00a0<\/p>\n Driven by his perception of the Netherlands as a place of safety, his reasons for coming were much like those of many others. \u201cYou\u2019re looking for a safe country,\u201d he says. \u201cFor so many people leaving Syria<\/a>, their house has been destroyed and half their family has died.\u201d<\/p>\n However, he arrived just as the nation was about to enter a new political era. After the 2023 Dutch general election, a coalition government \u2014 led by then prime minister Dick Schoof<\/a> \u2014 came to power in 2024 riding an anti-immigration, anti-EU and anti-Islam wave that put people like Ali under a magnifying glass.\u00a0<\/p>\n Schoof\u2019s cabinet, which was sworn in on 2 July 2024 and collapsed on 3 June 2025 \u2014 though it functioned as a caretaker government until 23 February 2026 \u2014 was a coalition of rightwing parties including Geert Wilders<\/a>\u2019 far-right Party for Freedom (PVV). The PVV was the largest party in the Dutch parliament, securing 37 of 150 seats in the November 2023 general election. The government promised a strict new asylum policy and solutions to decades-long problems such as the housing shortage in the Netherlands, which it blamed largely on migrants.<\/p>\n But measuring the government by the legislation it did or did not pass misses the point. While many of its headline promises were blocked by EU<\/a> law, coalition politics or the courts, some survived in altered form after the government collapsed. Even policies that were never passed reshaped the political debate and affected people like Ali.\u00a0<\/p>\n And as Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK<\/a> gains ground in Britain \u2014 leading the polls by a significant margin<\/a> before a Labour leadership challenge from Andy Burnham prompted Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s resignation in June \u2014 the Dutch experience offers a glimpse of what happens when a far-right party moves from opposition into government.<\/p>\n Reform too has centred its pitch on a radical overhaul of immigration policy that includes reviewing<\/a> all asylum claims from the past five years, putting around 400,000 people at risk of deportation. They also want to prioritise British citizens for housing, with Farage proposing a complete ban<\/a> on foreign nationals securing social housing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the Schoof cabinet\u2019s flagship goals was to limit the number of asylum seekers arriving in the Netherlands. PVV asylum minister Marjolein Faber planned to introduce the \u201cstrictest asylum regime ever<\/a>\u201d, citing overflowing asylum centres and financial strains from a high influx of migrants. These measures included reducing temporary permits from five to three years and restricting family reunification, which she attempted to introduce via the Asylum Emergency Measures Act \u2014 legislation usually reserved for natural disasters.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in 2025, while asylum applications fell<\/a>, family reunification numbers actually rose. Meanwhile, the Asylum Emergency Measures Act was voted down in the Dutch Senate, lacking majority support and ruled to be legally unconstitutional.\u00a0<\/p>\n Parveen Akhtar, a senior lecturer at Aston University covering UK and European politics, says the Schoof cabinet exemplifies the struggle the far right has in translating promises into policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Dutch example suggests that far-right parties often find it much easier to campaign than to govern,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt is inevitably easier, when in opposition, to make big and sweeping promises on borders, migration and Islam. In government, those promises run into law, courts, coalition politics, administrative abilities and international obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n Mark Klaassen, a professor at Leiden University and expert on immigration law,\u00a0 explains that sweeping changes to asylum policy were even less realistic in the Netherlands than the UK, where legislation is almost fully controlled by EU law.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew from the beginning there would be a lot of empty promises,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet parts of Wilders\u2019 agenda survived.<\/p>\n The cabinet\u2019s successors \u2014 the centre-right coalition led by D66\u2019s Rob Jetten \u2014 recently passed tougher restrictions<\/a> on family reunification, as part of national legislation to implement the EU\u2019s pact on migration and asylum<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis law, in the end, was passed,\u201d says Klaassen. \u201cIt was after the government fell, but the new government passed this part of the legislation. To my regret, but that\u2019s what they succeeded with.\u201d<\/p>\n For Ali, the law\u2019s failure mattered less than the uncertainty the rhetoric created around whether people like him would be treated fairly and granted asylum.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was initially sent back to Romania under the Dublin Regulation, which requires asylum claims to be processed in the first EU country entered. He said while he waited for 11 months, many people around him ended up waiting much longer, separated from their families needlessly.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no fixed time now. Some people wait one year, some three years. It\u2019s random. Those people get nothing. If they just behaved with humanity and understood why people come here. For so many, their whole family has died.\u201d<\/p>\n Klaassen says this is among the most frustrating failures of family reunification, enshrined under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. \u201cFamilies of people who get refugee status or subsidiary protection status live apart for years,\u201d he explains. \u201cWhile they are waiting, which is already unlawful, they are faced with this rhetoric and uncertainty about whether they will ever be able to be joined by their family members. And the only reason this happens is to make the Netherlands seem less attractive as a destination for asylum seekers.\u201d<\/p>\n Housing followed a similar pattern. Housing minister Mona Keijzer promised to build 100,000 homes a year<\/a> to combat the massive shortage in the country. This meant building affordable homes for lower-to-middle-income groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n Keijzer sought to address the issue of long-term Dutch citizens struggling to secure social housing, many of whom are on waiting lists for social housing that can range from seven up to 12 years depending<\/a> on the municipality.\u00a0<\/p>\n To do this, she proposed a bill<\/a> removing refugee priority for social housing \u2014 a law that is part of the Dutch Housing Act 2014 that legally binds municipalities to giving a certain number of refugees a home, within 10 weeks of their receiving a residence permit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet the target of building 100,000 homes a year proved impossible<\/a> due to legislative zoning processes and environmental regulations. The Netherlands has strict rules on nitrogen emissions, which new housing developments add to, meaning many of the plans were frozen indefinitely. Equally, the country\u2019s electrical grid is overloaded, meaning utility providers couldn\u2019t promise that homes would be provided with electricity on time. Consequently, housing construction fell<\/a> in both 2024 and 2025. The government was 20,000 short of its target in 2025, building 2,000 fewer homes than in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n In an interview<\/a> with De Telegraaf, Keijzer argued that refugees were being allocated housing faster than long-term residents. But the numbers show they occupy less than 10%<\/a> of social housing, suggesting they were not the main driver of long waiting lists.\u00a0<\/p>\n Angelo Schuurmans, director of Thuis in Oss<\/a> \u2014 a widely lauded refugee centre \u2014 says it was the rhetoric around refugees and housing that was most damaging.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one big distraction from the fact that we don\u2019t have enough houses and it\u2019s very easy to blame this little group of people and make their lives more difficult,\u201d says the 41-year-old.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf we did implement [removing refugee priority], it\u2019s only a matter of time before people would see that refugees were not the problem. It takes years before you can get a house.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While the plan to stop giving refugees with residence permits priority for social housing did not pass at the time \u2014 deemed unconstitutional<\/a> by the Dutch Council of State \u2014 the national tenants\u2019 union Woonbond<\/a> was also critical of Keijzer\u2019s policies, accusing the government of scapegoating asylum seekers to distract from decades of underinvestment in social housing.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a result, many people have [partly] adopted the government\u2019s political narrative,\u201d says a spokesperson from the union. \u201cWe\u2019ve heard many people say that asylum seekers are taking over all the houses and that there are no longer any homes left for their own son or the girl next door.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilders eventually pulled his party, PVV, out of the coalition \u2014 after his allies refused to pass his 10-point anti-immigration plan \u2014 causing the government to collapse and making the cabinet\u2019s tenure one of the shortest in Dutch political history, and, by some measures, comparatively less productive<\/a> than its predecessors.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/02-netherlands-government.jpg\")
Marjolein Faber, the far-right PVV politician who was asylum minister in the Netherlands\u2019 2024 coalition government. Photograph by Remko De Waal\/ANP\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/03-netherlands-government.jpg\")
A protest in Amsterdam on 1 March 2026 against the lack of affordable housing in the city. Photograph by Georgios Kostomitsopoulos\/NurPhoto\/Getty Images<\/p>\n