Dutch citizens have begun organising themselves to perform checks along the German border, drawing praise from populist leader Geert Wilders and the ire of establishment politicians.
In the wake of the government collapsing in The Hague last week after coalition partners refused to agree to the strict border controls proposed by Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV), a group of Dutch citizens have taken it upon themselves to enforce checks at the border between the Netherlands and Germany over the weekend.
According to the German paper of record Die Welt, Dutchmen clad in high-visibility vests blocked off highway 408 near a reception centre for alleged asylum seekers in Ter Apel, across the border from the German state of Lower Saxony. The impromptu citizen border force of around 12 men reportedly stopped cars and searched trunks for illegals trying to enter the country.
Acting Migration Minister David van Weel said that while “frustration is understandable” and that the “influx of asylum seekers must decrease,” he said that citizens must not take the law into their own hands. “Let the police and military police do their job. Obey the law,” he said.
Populist leader Geert Wilders criticised the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) politician, branding him a “weakling” who is doing “absolutely nothing” to deal with the illegal migration crisis. “If people are frustrated, it is because the VVD is completely failing them,” Wilders said.
The anti-mass migration politician went on to praise the “fantastic initiative” of the Dutch citizens who took it upon themselves to police the border, saying that it “should happen everywhere at the border”. Wilders said that if the government refuses to deploy the military to the border, then the people “will have to do it ourselves”, adding that he would personally “like to participate next time!”
Meanwhile, the neo-liberal VVD party, which previously led the Dutch government under former PM and now NATO Chief Mark Rutte, before it collapsed in 2023 over migration, said on Monday that it will no longer cooperate with Wilders’ party.
Rutte’s replacement, Turkish-born Dilan Yesilgöz said that her supposedly centre-right party will instead seek to partner with the GroenLinks–PvdA (GreenLeft–Labour) alliance led by EU Green New Deal architect Frans Timmermans in the upcoming snap election.
The election was triggered after Wilders announced that his Party for Freedom would leave the coalition government with the Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) party, the New Social Contract (NCC), and the VVD over failures to implement the strict migration controls his party ran on in the 2023 elections.
Wilders, who accepted a kingmaker role after the other parties refused to back him for prime minister, despite his party coming in first place in the last elections, accused the VVD and Yesilgöz of moving to “destroy the Netherlands together with the left.”
“That means many more asylum seekers and Islam. But the voter decides. So make the PVV the largest party so that no one can ignore us,” he said.
However, the decision by the VVD to side with Timmermans and the left may make it difficult for Wilders to return to government, with current polling putting him and his allies well short of the necessary 76 in the House of Representatives needed to form a government without the VVD.
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