Why is there still no cabinet in the Netherlands?

A few months ago, on March 17, there was quite some excitement in The Netherlands; it was time to vote. During the pandemic, this was a bit different. For the first time in democratic history, the Dutch voters had to wear facemasks, and the elderly were able to vote by mail. Furthermore, there were more political parties than ever (Parlement.com, n.d.). The voting process went fine and without too much trouble. However, there is still no cabinet; what is the reason behind this?

Difficulties

The foremost reason for the cabinet not making a formation is simple; the parties are not reaching an agreement. To make decisions in both the first and the second chamber, a majority needs to be reached. To do so, political parties have negotiations with each other in the formation. Usually, the biggest party, in this case, the VVD, leads these negotiations because they are vital for a majority. Some parties do not want to secede on specific topics, and some do not want to work together with particular parties. This makes the formation a complex puzzle.

Omtzigt

Moreover, at the beginning of the formation, some issues arose. Confidential information of the investigators leaked: "Omtzigt, function elsewhere", one of the documents mentioned. Omtzigt was adjoined with the CDA, the 4th biggest party, and many others want to reign (Kiesraad, 2021). Pieter Omtzigt is known for revealing serious affairs; this makes him popular amongst the people (NOS 2021). The small sentence of the report caused a lot of fuzz, the investigators of the formation were fired, and the process had to start from the beginning.

What is next?

All in all, the formation process has been going on for over half a year and, the question is how much longer it will take. If the political parties cannot reach an agreement, new elections might have to be held. The cabinet is still doing its day-to-day job, but big decisions are not being made now.

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