Prime Minister Rutte is tired of politics These photos show the extreme weather conditions of the weekend

Prime Minister Mark Rutte wants to leave politics after the cabinet has fallen.

In new elections he will no longer be available as a candidate for his right-wing liberal party VVD for a fifth term and he will withdraw from politics, Rutte said in the House of Representatives in The Hague on Monday. Since the beginning of 2022, the fourth cabinet of right-liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte has been sitting. Rutte himself was Prime Minister of the Netherlands for almost 13 years.

The previous four-party coalition fell apart in the dispute over migration policy on Friday evening. The bottleneck in the crisis consultations that led to the fall of the cabinet was a restriction on the family reunification of refugees who are already in the country. Rutte’s right-liberal party VVD had called for the restriction. For other parties, the demand went too far.

Rutte announced his departure at the start of a parliamentary debate on the situation after the breakup of the government. He said it was a personal decision, regardless of the current situation. “This debate should be about our country,” he said before the start of the meeting, in which the opposition, among others, wanted to submit a motion of no confidence in the prime minister.

The date of a new election has not yet been set. This will probably take place in November. King Willem-Alexander is expected to announce the election date soon.

Until then, as many fear, a standstill could dominate the work of the incumbent government. In addition to migration policy, people in the Netherlands are also concerned about the housing shortage, the energy transition and climate policy. One of the major conflicts is the future of agriculture given the announced environmental regulations. It is still completely open who will be the favorite to succeed Rutte at the VVD or at one of the other parties.

With almost 13 years as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Rutte was one of the longest-serving heads of government in the EU. But in his own country he is no longer untouchable after numerous affairs and recently he was mainly accused by supporters of his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of having left the right-wing course of his party. His major opponent, the right-wing populist Geert Wilders, accused him of yielding, especially when it came to climate and asylum policy. For a long time, however, many Dutch people saw Rutte as a good crisis manager, someone who kept the store together.

(aeg/sda/dpa)