3 hours Ago By Robin Pascoe
Prime minister Dick Schoof has won acceptance for a €3.5 billion package of extra military support for Ukraine and “room” to vote in favour of the European Commission’s €800 billion project to rearm Europe, despite opposition from three cabinet parties. Schoof had already given his backing to the motion last week and was placed in a very difficult position by the no vote in parliament, which included the PVV, BBB, and NSC.
MPs voted by 73 to 71 for a motion opposing the plan, announced by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen last week, to raise the money by relaxing the EU’s budget deficit rules and a €150 million loan scheme. However, the prime minister told reporters after Friday’s cabinet meeting that the four coalition parties had agreed to support his position. After Thursday’s discussions, the parties have now agreed that Schoof will “look hard” at the way the EU package is being financed and will not support “gifts” to member states or “extra guarantees”.
The measures too must be of a temporary nature. While the three dissident parties can now claim Schoof has been given tough conditions to comply with, he does have the leeway to vote in favour of the ReArm package, as he had demanded. Work will start on fleshing out the agreement in the coming weeks.
The crisis, now averted, is yet another illustration of how fragile the cabinet coalition is. According to the Volkskrant , should the cabinet fall, there need not necessarily be new elections. The GroenLinks-PvdA alliance and D66 could step in to take the place of the PVV and BBB and enable the pro-Ukraine line to continue.
Meanwhile, it emerged later that Dilan Yeşilgöz, leader of the four-cabinet-party VVD, did not attend the crisis talks because she was in Ukraine, meeting prime minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy..
