Veteran populist and anti-Islamification campaigner Geert Wilders is on pace for his second major political victory in a year.
Wilders cast this week’s European Parliament elections in his characteristically stark terms, saying a vote for the left will only bring more terrorism and crime while a safer Netherlands can be realised with a vote for his Party for Freedom.
On the back of winning a “mega victory” in last November’s general election, in which his Party for Freedom (PVV) pulled off “one of the biggest political upsets in Dutch politics since World War II” in securing 37 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives and becoming the largest political party in the legislature for the first time in the history of the party, Geert Wilders is looking to go from strength to strength.
According to Dutch public broadcaster NOS, Wilder’s party is projected to win the most nationally-allocated seats in the European Parliament after this week’s elections, with polls predicting that the PVV will pick up at least nine of the 31 seats assigned to the Netherlands in the EU legislative body. This would represent a dramatic turnaround from the previous vote in 2019 when Wilder’s party did not receive enough votes to send a single MEP to Strasbourg.
After spending decades relegated to the political sidelines in the Netherlands, with a second election victory, Wilders will firmly entrench his position as the most powerful force in Dutch politics as he continues to wrangle the formation of a new right-wing government in The Binnenhof.
The ascendancy of the 60-year-old populist campaigner — and former Breitbart contributor — comes as the public grows increasingly sceptical of the open borders agenda that has dominated in Brussels and The Hague.
It is not surprising then that mass migration was the focus of Wilders’ pitch to voters before they go to the polls on Thursday.
“If you want open borders and therefore more terrorists, knife-wielders and Hamas supporters to enter, then vote left. If you want fewer asylum and a tough approach to terror, anti-Semitism and violence and want to make the Netherlands safer, then vote PVV! ” he wrote on X.
Wilders has been personally impacted by the increased threat of terrorism in the country, having been under round-the-clock police protection since 2004 over threats to his life from Islamists for his critiques of the Muslim religion.
The Netherlands, which has the highest population density of any non-microstate country in the EU, has seen a radical change in its immigration levels over the past two decades.
While net migration to the country from 2003 to 2007 was “negative” meaning that more people left the country than entered it, there has been a dramatic increase since then. In 2022, net migration hit 223,798 as 403,108 foreigners immigrated to The Netherlands, an increase of 150,580 over the previous year and over four times the number that came in 2004.
With the influx of millions into the small nation — about the same size as the U.S. state of Maryland — attitudes towards mass migration have begun to change in the traditionally liberal country. Research from Ipsos released in April found that nearly half of the Dutch public wants to reintroduce border controls with other EU nations and end the so-called “free movement” of people.
The survey also found that since Wilders’ victory in November attitudes towards asylum seekers have become even more negative, with just 39 per cent saying they believe the country has a moral obligation to take in refugees, compared to nearly half of respondents just several months ago. Many voters polled cited concerns over “fake refugees” coming into the country as “fortune seekers”.
Meanwhile, a separate survey in March found that 70 per cent of the Dutch listed fighting illegal immigration as a top priority, the highest percentage of any country within the EU surveyed.
This has correlated — as in other European countries experiencing mass migration — a surge in support for populist parties promising to bring down the number of foreigners permitted into their countries. Wilders, for example, has vowed to introduce the “strictest admission regime for asylum and the most comprehensive package to control migration ever,” once his government comes into power, with negotiations between coalition partners expected to finally wrap later this month.