Dutch Rutte meets king to tender resignation after governmental collapse

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte met with King Willem-Alexander on Saturday to discuss a caretaker administration, the day after his centre-right government collapsed following a dispute over migration policies.
Rutte declined to comment on the hour-and-a-half-long talks after he left the palace in The Hague. “These are confidential meetings,” he told reporters. The next major step will be to dissolve parliament, but there first will be a debate about the government’s resignation in the Dutch lower house on Monday. After parliament is dissolved, an election is expected to be held in November
On Friday, the Netherlands’ four-party coalition government collapsed after it failed to reach a deal to restrict immigration. The crisis was triggered by a push by Rutte’s conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) to limit the flow of asylum seekers to the Netherlands. Two of the four-party coalition refused to support this move. “It’s no secret that the coalition partners have differing opinions about immigration policy. Today we, unfortunately, have to conclude that those differences have become insurmountable. Therefore I will tender the resignation of the entire cabinet to the king,” Rutte said in a televised news conference. Tensions came to a head this week after Rutte demanded support for a proposal to limit the entrance of children of war refugees who are already in the Netherlands and to make families wait at least two years before they can be united. The latest proposal was vehemently opposed by the Christian Union and liberal D66, which caused the stalemate.
Rutte’s coalition will stay on as a caretaker government until a new administration is formed after new elections, a process usually takes months. The National Elections Committee confirmed that elections would not be held before mid-November. A caretaker government cannot decide on new policies, but according to Rutte, this will not affect the country’s support for Ukraine. The Netherlands has one of Europe’s toughest immigration policies but under the pressure of right-wing parties, Rutte had for months been trying to seek ways to further reduce the inflow of asylum seekers. Asylum applications in the Netherlands jumped by a third last year to over 46,000, and the government has projected they could increase to more than 70,000 this year—topping the previous high of 2015.