The Netherland’s new leader

LINDSAY MAST: Next, a new leader in the Netherlands.

Back in November, Dutch voters shocked the world by voting for anti-immigration candidate Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom. After 6 months of negotiating, Wilders and three other parties are finally ready to form a coalition government. But Wilders is not going to lead it.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Instead, the new prime minister is a career civil servant who has never held elected office. How did he get the top job?

WORLD reporter Emma Freire used to live in the Netherlands and has been following this story.

MAST: Emma thanks for joining us.

EMMA FREIRE: Good Morning, Lindsay.

LINDSAY MAST: Let’s start with Geert Wilders. Why is he not going to become Prime Minister?

FREIRE: So back in November, Wilders and his party for freedom won 31 out of 150 seats in the Dutch parliament. By Dutch standards, that's a large majority. And the tradition is that the largest party provides the prime minister. So normally Wilders would become prime minister. But in Dutch politics, because no one wins a majority, they also have to form a coalition government. Wilders is forming a coalition with three other parties and the leaders of two of those parties will not accept him as prime minister—they say he's too divisive and too controversial. So Wilders has accepted as the price he has to pay to form a government, that he can't become prime minister. He's just going stay in Parliament and lead his party and his decision to step aside has won him respect. Here's the opinion of one Dutch voter, Adrian Borggreve. He's a lecturer emeritus at a college in the Dutch city of Deventer.

ADRIAN BORGGREVE: He’s choosing for stability in the government and he will not have a lot discussions about his person.

MAST: Okay, well moving to Dick Schoof. Tell us a bit about him. Who is he exactly?

FREIRE: So Schoof is a bit of a cipher. He’s currently not a member of any political party and people don't really know much about his views. He's 67, which is actually quite old for a Dutch politician. But he's never held elected office before. And there's no precedent in Dutch modern political history for a prime minister like this. Schoof currently serves as the Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice, he—that means he has the highest non-appointed position there. He has held many important positions in Dutch government in the areas of intelligence and policing. And he was also previously the head of the immigration service. So he brings a wealth of experience in policy and the workings of government, but never from the elected side. He's promised to implement the policies of the parties in the governing coalition, and not to impose his own views. So the idea is that he's going to continue in the role of enacting policy a bit like a civil servant rather than making it himself.

MAST: So Schoof is clearly a very unusual kind of prime minister. Emma, do you think there are benefits to his outsider status? And then also what kind of challenges do you think he might face?

FREIRE: Well, in terms of the benefits, he will be an apolitical figure. So the governing coalition has four parties and their leaders are all strong personalities— particularly Geert Wilders. So ideally, Schoof can hold them together. And as an outsider who will also be respected by the opposition parties. In terms of challenges, his verbal skills are not strong. You could see during his inaugural press conference that he was nervous and stumbled over his words. And there's also a broader criticism, just that his selection is undemocratic. Nobody voted for him. In November, Dutch voters went to the ballot box and they voted for change of some kind. And Schoof, you know, is perhaps in some ways the human embodification of the status quo.

MAST: Sounds like some real challenges there. Back to the vote, Wilders ran on anti-immigration platform, so will Dutch voters still get reduced immigration from their new government?

FREIRE: They plan to pass an asylum crisis law which will give them broader powers to act. They want to deport asylum seekers whose applications have been denied, put more limits on how many family members can join an asylum seeker. They also want to ask the European Union if they can stop participating in European Union immigration policy. That's going to be really tough for Schoof, who's going to Brussels without much personal authority to have to ask for that exemption, but that is going to be very important. Adrian Borggeve explains why.

ADRIAN BORGGEVE: I think a lot of plans that the new parties have will not be realistic because we are part of the European Union and there is a lot of restrictions because we have ratified a lot of laws and regulations.

MAST: With four parties forming a coalition government, sounds like a lot of compromises had to be made. Beyond immigration, Emma, what kind of policies can we expect from the new government?

FREIRE: Well, in recent years, the Netherlands was rocked by massive protests by farmers whose farms were being forcibly sold and closed to meet EU nitrogen emissions targets. But now the farmer citizen movement or BBB, a party specifically set up to represent the interests of farmers, is part of the coalition government. So, they're going to work hard on this. One perhaps surprising move is that they want to raise the speed limit on the highways back to 80 miles per hour. A few years ago, the speed limit was reduced to 60 miles per hour as a way of reducing the country's nitrogen emissions to meet EU targets but a recent study found that there was almost no impact on nitrogen emissions. So this is a pretty easy area for the four parties to agree on. And I'm sure Dutch some Dutch motorists will be very happy.

MAST: Sounds like it could be a wild ride ahead in more than one way. Emma Freire is a senior magazine writer for WORLD Magazine. Thanks so much for this report, Emma!

FREIRE: Thank you, Lindsay.

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