New Dutch government sworn in amid concerns over far-right ministers

The development aid minister has argued that development aid should be abolished, the asylum and immigration minister has referred to “population replacement”, and the housing minister was a vocal anti-lockdown campaigner.

Sworn in on Tuesday, the new Dutch cabinet of prime minister Dick Schoof , featuring five ministers from Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party (PVV) and two from the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), has raised more than a few eyebrows in the Netherlands.

Schoof, a career bureaucrat who has led the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD and was the senior official at the ministry of justice, was put forward to alleviate coalition partners’ concerns over Wilders.

But they have still raised questions over the suitability of some cabinet members for their new jobs, prompting two to promise MPs they will behave differently in government.

Wilders, whose party rocked the country by finishing first in elections last November, insisted last week that his nominees were “more and more popular. They speak the language of the man and woman in the street. I am very proud of them.”

But the anti-Islam firebrand was forced to abandon the PVV’s original choice for immigration minister, Gidi Markuszower, after “issues arose” during the routine security screening that “could be problematic” for his appointment.

Markuszower, who was once arrested for illegally carrying a gun (charges were dropped) and has called Dutch immigration policy “a massive crime against the people”, previously withdrew as a PVV parliamentary candidate in 2010 after the security service reportedly flagged him as a “risk to national integrity”.

Markuszower’s replacement this time, Marjolein Faber, did not have the smoothest of confirmations, either. A former PVV senator, she last week retracted her use, during a debate in the upper house, of the term “population replacement”, saying she recognised the word omvolking had “terrible connotations”.

However, she told a parliamentary panel grilling prospective ministers that “the fact is that the demographics of the Netherlands are changing” and it was “very legitimate to have big concerns about that, as I have. But the word I used was … inappropriate.”

Faber is also known for long refusing to delete a 2019 tweet saying “reliable sources” had told her the suspect in a knife attack in the northern city of Groningen had “a north African appearance”, even after the three victims said he was white.

She finally acknowledged in front of the parliamentary committee last month that the tweet had been incorrect. Faber has also claimed that while the climate may well be changing, humans are not responsible and global heating is due to “the activity of the sun”.

Wilders’ pick for foreign trade and development aid, Reinette Klever, has also reposted mentions of omvolking , a Nazi-era term adopted now used by the far right to signify the planned replacement of “native” white populations by migrants.

Klever – who in 2016 called for the entire Dutch aid budget to be scrapped – announced last week she was stepping down from the board of Ongehoord Nederland (Unheard Netherlands), a far-right broadcaster that was fined in 2022 for disseminating fake news.

PVV’s health and deputy prime minister, Fleur Agema, meanwhile, has advocated in favour of reducing the term limits for abortions .

The far-right leader economy minister, Dirk Beljaarts, a former hotel manager and Budapest’s honorary consul in the Netherlands, has had to give up his Hungarian passport since Wilders opposes dual nationality for holders of high office.

And the housing minister Mona Keijzer, who joined BBB from the Christian Democrat CDA after being sacked from a previous cabinet by former prime minister Mark Rutte for publicly criticising Covid rules, said last month on a talkshow that “hatred of Jews is almost part of Islamic culture”.

Under fire from the other guests, Keijzer added that she did “not mean all Muslims”. Despite a legal complaint from Muslim groups for incitement to hatred, she has since stood by her original assertion, saying “multiple studies” demonstrated it.

The VVD’s new leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz, earlier this month criticised Faber’s appointment in particular, saying the prospective minister was “a not uncontroversial candidate” whose “tone and attitude” might mean she was not suitable for the job.

Faber said she understood the “commotion” over her comments in opposition and recognised she was in “a new reality”. Klever has since said that, as a minister, she would observe the terms of the coalition agreement and “behave myself”.

But Frans Timmermans, the leader of the GreenLeft/Labour (GL/PvdA) alliance that finished ahead of PVV in the European parliamentary elections, accused the far-right leader of having made “mistake after mistake” over the past six months.

“And time and time again, a deafening silence from [coalition members] VVD and NSC [New Social Contract],” he wrote on X. “Embarrassed, or is this the new culture of government?”