The Electoral Council sees Wednesday, October 29, as the “first realistic option” to hold the House of Representatives elections. The caretaker cabinet is therefore advised to organize the elections on that day.
The advice of the Electoral Council is not binding, but is usually adopted by the (caretaker) cabinet.
It always takes some time before new elections can be organized. After the fall of a cabinet, a parliament must first be dissolved. That usually takes some time.
Once parliament has been dissolved, the elections must take place within three months. Everything must be arranged within that time. “Municipalities need time to carefully organize elections. Think of recruiting and training sufficient volunteers and finding enough suitable polling stations,” says Electoral Council Chairman Wim Kuijken.
Elections always take place on Wednesdays. To give as many people as possible the opportunity to vote, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are ruled out for religious reasons. Monday is also ruled out because the preparations must then take place at the weekend. The choice therefore usually falls on Wednesday.
The election date means that the Netherlands will have a caretaker cabinet at least until (well) after October 29. The formation can begin after the elections. Experience shows that this can take a long time. The Rutte IV cabinet had the longest formation in Dutch history with 299 days.
The coalition parties PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB could not agree on asylum policy. PVV leader Geert Wilders wanted extra measures in the field of asylum reception. Among other things, he wanted to close the borders to asylum seekers, remove status holders from asylum seeker centers and stop family reunification.
According to Wilders, the policy was not progressing quickly enough, even though his party was in charge with Minister Marjolein Faber (Asylum). Wilders wanted a signature under his plans as soon as possible, but the other coalition parties did not want to simply break open the main outlines agreement. They wanted Wilders to first work out his own asylum plans himself. The PVV member then decided to step out of the coalition.
The Schoof cabinet will go down in the books as one of the shortest-lived cabinets. It was installed on July 2, 2024 after a difficult formation. This century, the Balkenende I and III cabinets also did not last a year.