Wilders-Backed Dutch Government Plans to Cut Immigration, Development Aid

Source: Bloomberg

The Netherlands, the second-largest exporter in the euro zone, got a new government today backed by Geert Wilders’s anti-Islam party that plans to cut immigration and reduce spending on development aid and the European Union. The Netherlands, which has been known for accepting foreigners since Portuguese Jews sought refuge there, has played an outsized role in the world economy since the founding of the Dutch East India Company in 1602. The merchant empire, which focused on trading instead of cultural colonization, once stretched from the Caribbean to Indonesia.

“The Dutch are increasingly scared of the outside world, instead of seeing it as a chance to profit from foreigners by trading,” said Lans Bovenberg, a professor of economics at Tilburg University. “This Cabinet is a next step in that direction.” He called it “a worrying development, as our country profits from the openness to the world and from people coming in.”

About 1.5 million Dutch voters (15.5%) cast ballots for Wilders’s Freedom Party, which wants to stop the building of mosques and withdraw from the EU. Wilders called Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose party has its roots in Islam, a “total freak” in March. During a visit to Germany last month, he said Chancellor Angela Merkel is accepting “Islamization as inevitable.”

“The presence of Wilders indicates that this image of tolerance isn’t correct anymore,” said James Kennedy, a professor of Dutch history at the University of Amsterdam. “The Netherlands has become more modest in its international ideals.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-14/wilders-backed-dutch-government-plans-to-cut-immigration-development-aid.html

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Didn't know that the Netherlands was the second-largest exporter among the euro countries after Germany. The role of Wilders in the new government and his policy demands are not new.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/10/wilders_warns_new_cabinet_on_n.php

Wilders’anti-Islam PVV party has agreed to prop up the new minority coalition government in return for tough measures to combat immigration. ‘If it does not manage to bring about a very substantial reduction in the number of non-western immigrants, the PVV has a problem and the cabinet has a problem,’ Wilders said.

Earlier, PVV European MP Barry Madlener told Nos tv the aim of anti-immigration measures outlined in the new government agreement is to combat the ‘islamisation’ of the Netherlands. Madlener was Geert Wilders’ right hand during the recent negotiations. Measures to reduce family reunions are aimed at reducing the number of Muslims coming to the country, Madlener said. ‘That is our intention,’ he told the tv programme.

And it is not unrealistic to expect shifts in European policy that will make this possible, he said. For example, Rutte could form a conservative alliance with French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the MEP said.

Several of the measures in the coalition agreement would involve changing EU treaties.

Prime minister Mark Rutte told his first news conference that the VVD, CDA and PVV all have different arguments in favour of government policy. ‘We differ on this with the PVV. That is why the PVV is not part of the government,’ he was reported as saying.

The Dutch have given heart to the evil inside them. I, and many friends , have fled the rise of the Dutch extreme right. Wilders is a scum. Pure and simple. Wij zeggen dat hij schorem is en dat hij is the vleeswording van het ergste in het Nederlandse "gedachtengoed". Sure Geertje, pull us out of the EU and have all our exports hit with a 30% export/import tariff. These politicians represent the ruin of a once fine and highly influential social model. The future is grim for those who remain. I have already started boycotting Dutch stuff...