CNN
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Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said he is tendering his entire cabinet’s resignation, after failing to come to an agreement with coalition partners about immigration policy.
“It’s no secret that the coalition partners have differing opinions about immigration policy,” he said at a press conference late Friday night according to a Reuters translation.
“Today we unfortunately have to conclude that those differences have become insurmountable. Therefore, in writing, I will tender the resignation of the entire cabinet to the king,” he added.
The move, which will cause the Dutch government to collapse and trigger new elections, was sparked by differences between Rutte’s conservative VVD party and coalition counterparts over measures to limit the flow of asylum seekers to the country.
While the VVD is pushing for tighter controls, two of the four-party government coalition refused to support them.
Rutte’s party has proposed limiting entrance for the children of war refugees who are already in the country and making families wait for at least two years before they can be united.
That plan has failed to impress the small Christian Union and liberal D66, leading to the split.
“Migration is a large and important issue, both socially and politically. Now that we have failed to reach an agreement on this issue, we in the cabinet met to discuss the situation and collectively decided that the coalition had lost its political foundation,” Rutte said on Friday.
He went on to call it “extremely regrettable” but acknowledged the “political reality we cannot avoid”.
“Hereby, the entire cabinet and its leaders has become a caretaker government. The next step will be setting new elections,” he said.
The number of applications the Netherlands received related to asylum jumped from 36,620 in 2021 to 47,991 last year, with most applicants coming from Syria, according to the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service.
As of May this year, the country had received 16,097 applications.
The government estimates applications could top 70,000 by the end of 2023.
