A center-left Dutch party made major gains in the country’s parliamentary elections Wednesday after the far-right-led government collapsed in June.
A progressive, 38-year-old former energy minister is now on track to be the next prime minister, but first faces the difficult task of forming a majority coalition. The election marked a return to the center for the Netherlands, two years after an anti-immigration party rose to power. The outcome will reverberate throughout Europe and could energize other centrist parties looking to fend off the populist far right.
The winning party used “pragmatic optimism” that countered the right’s doomerist projections, and successfully reclaimed the country’s flag as a symbol of pride, a prominent Dutch journalist wrote.
