Fourth Rutte cabinet

The fourth Rutte cabinet was the cabinet of the Netherlands from 10 January 2022 until 2 July 2024. The cabinet was a continuation of the third Rutte cabinet and was formed by the conservative liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the social liberal Democrats 66 (D66) and the Christian democratic Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and Christian Union (CU) after the election of 2021. The cabinet fell on 7 July 2023, after failing to reach an agreement on separate treatment of refugees fleeing from war. It continued serving as a demissionary cabinet until the Schoof cabinet was sworn in on 2 July 2024.

Formation
The formation of the cabinet was particularly difficult; it required the longest time of any cabinet so far.

The formation became difficult after scout Kajsa Ollongren was photographed with notes that read "Omtzigt position elsewhere", which was controversial, for Omtzigt was one of the most popular members of parliament within his party, the Christian Democratic Appeal.

Coalition accord
The coalition accord contained, among other things, more agreements about accelerating the Netherlands' climate ambitions (55% CO2 reduction in 2030), changes to daycare costs, preparation for new nuclear power plants, creation of road pricing (not toll) starting in 2030, accelerated nitrogen reduction (−50% in 2030), more regulation of the rental sector, equalizing pay between grade school and high school teachers, a return of the basic scholarship for students, increase over time of legal minimum wage by 7.5% and more defense spending.

Colonial past
In February 2022, the cabinet offered its apologies to Indonesia for the systematic and extreme violence by Dutch soldiers during the Indonesian war of independence and the subsequent turning of a blind eye by all previous administrations. The apologies were also extended to any other groups in the Netherlands who had had to learn to live with the consequences of these decisions, such as veterans.

In December 2022, the cabinet offered their apologies for the Dutch history of slavery, in particular the trans-Atlantic slave trade, on behalf of itself and all its institutional predecessors, denouncing the slave trade as a crime against humanity. In the National Archives, the prime minister also offered the apology in Sranan Tongo, Papiamento, Dutch and English. For the first time, the cabinet recognized that the slave trade had had lasting consequences in the Netherlands, a kind of institutional racism. It proposed a fund of €200 million for measures surrounding "awareness, engagement and impact".

Child welfare scandal
Approximately 26,000 single parents were accused of fraud by the Dutch tax and customs administration, which, for some, resulted in their children being taken out of their custody, even if they had not committed fraud. This had been brewing for many years, but only gained national attention during Rutte III, and led to that government's resignation in 2021. While a special department was created to rectify this mistake, the problem has not been resolved.

This has resulted in people feeling like no real change has happened between governments as the process of rectification has ground to a standstill and there is seemingly no end in sight.

Governance culture
Mark Rutte has been in the news many times for maintaining a closed governing culture. During parliamentary hearings surrounding the welfare scandal, there was mention of a "Rutte-doctrine", a policy of keeping as much information away from the public as possible. After the fall of the cabinet, it has been characterized by CDA parliamentary leader Pieter Heerma as "irresponsibly harsh" and "bordering on reckless politics".

Some of the promises made in the coalition accord were to "improve the information provided to the House of Representatives", modernizing the archival law and to make information available to the public more quickly.

Public inquiry by the newspaper de Volkskrant led to them suing the government over a freedom of information request. During the process, it came to light that prime minister Mark Rutte had been wiping the majority of SMS text messages he received on his private phone for years, in violation of the archival legislation. His excuse was that his phone memory filled up too quickly. This was not considered a plausible excuse by members of the House.

Student loan system
The Netherlands has a long history of subsidizing students to take higher education, but a significant change to the system in 2015 (Rutte II) ended the basic scholarship (basisbeurs), introducing instead a borrowing system; this was projected to save the government a billion euro per year.

Rutte IV reintroduced the basic scholarship, stating that the high student debts reduce quality of life, make students more hesitant to pursue higher education and reduce the chance for equal opportunities. There were also additional compensation for students who studied under the borrowing framework.

Natural gas extraction and earthquakes
The Netherlands has a history of extracting gas from natural gas fields and does not experience natural destructive earthquakes according to the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, however, the extraction of natural gas above the Groningen gas field has caused several man-made earthquakes which severely damaged people's properties. The damage to the locals and concerns around climate change have been an ongoing concern and led to a parliamentary audit on the government's decisions surrounding the Groningen gas field, the largest natural gas field in Europe.

Earthquakes caused by gas extraction have been noted elsewhere in the Netherlands as well. Earthquakes due to gas extraction have been happening since 1986, but have only grown more severe since the 2000s.

The gas extraction in Groningen has been scaling down since 2018, and is planned to stop in October 2023. This was a point of contention given the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent European ban on gas imports from Russia.

During the Rutte IV cabinet, compensation was awarded to homeowners whose houses were damaged by gas extraction, but this process has generally not gone smoothly.

On 24 February 2023, a parliamentary inquiry commission determined the government owed a ereschuld("debt of honour") to residents of Groningen and proposed several remedies to alleviate this.

Nitrogen crisis
The government of the Netherlands is experiencing a crisis of ecology and of governance through the mishandling of the European measures on nitrogen that were agreed upon as early as 1991 with the agreement of the Habitats Directive. It has been recognized as a serious issue since 2019.

Nitrogen emissions are caused by a variety of essential economic activities such as construction, farming, transport and industry, but there is a science-informed and court-enforced target that the Netherlands would have to reduce nitrogen emissions in certain areas by up to 50% compared to 2019 by 2023. This has created political unrest among the industries affected, most visibly farmers, who protested and flew Dutch flags upside down and founded a new political party, the Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB), just after the report from 2019.

Since the cabinet took charge in January 2022, courts have ruled that the policy surrounding construction was not consistent with, or insufficient to comply with, nitrogen legislation and thousands of construction projects had to be halted or cancelled to comply with nitrogen legislation.

The cabinet has attempted to negotiate an agreeable settlement with both small and large agrarians, but all attempts at negotiation eventually broke down. The strong incentive to negotiate is in part due to the large political gains of BBB in the 2023 provincial elections. The cabinet changed its position several times, sometimes telling different things to different parties, leading to more tension and uncertainty.

Energy and inflation
Rising energy prices and high inflation impacted the economy of the Netherlands during the term of the government, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent ban on fuel imports from Russia, and greedflation. The rise in energy prices prompted the government to introduce a price ceiling on energy, paying the difference on behalf of the citizens.

Housing shortage
The Netherlands has had a severe housing shortage for some time for a variety of reasons. This shortage grew significantly during the term of the cabinet from ~300,000 to about 400,000 houses.

Asylum policy
Immigration and asylum policy has been an important political topic in the Netherlands for many years. The government has generally been unwilling to create permanent capacity for asylum seekers, choosing to instead scale capacity up or down as required, creating issues for municipalities.

In recent years, the Netherlands has received asylum seekers from Syria fleeing the Syrian civil war and from Ukraine fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Asylum applications have increased by ~33% since 2022 to over 47,000, and, according to government estimates, are expected to reach 70,000 by the end of 2023. This has exceeded the number of refugees the country was prepared for. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, this was because capacity to house asylum seekers was scaled down after the "Turkey deal".

In 2022, through the introduction of the Spreidingswet, the government chose to devolve responsibility for taking on an assigned number of asylum seekers to the municipalities, which would receive the responsibility to house and integrate a number of asylum seekers from the COA (central organ for housing asylum seekers). Municipalities were generally found either unwilling or unable to place asylum seeker housing centers (AZCs), in part due to concerns of locals such as "there are too many people" or "why can't it be somewhere else?".

The scaling down of housing for asylum seekers, a general housing shortage and the inability to create more housing has resulted in bad living conditions in Registration centre Ter Apel, which resulted in the international red cross deeming it necessary to lend aid, as conditions were considered "inhuman and unsustainable".

The Raad voor het Openbaar Bestuur(the council for public governance) and the Adviesraad Migratie(advice council immigration) judged the crisis to be "a crisis created and maintained by the government itself".

In February 2023, the CDA proposed to institute a two-status system. This proposal was supported by the VVD but opposed by Christian Union and Democrats 66.

The proposal would have classified war refugees under a different status than other refugees. It would limit the total number of relatives who could be reunited with refugees to 200 per month, force families to wait for two years before being allowed to reunite and reduce the maximum term of residence to three years compared to the regular seven.

Disagreement about this proposal led to the government's resignation three months later, as Christian Union and Democrats 66 could not abide by the terms demanded by the VVD. This was a premeditated strategy, rather than chance, according to Christian Union and opposition parties.

Demissionary
The cabinet fell on Friday 7 July 2023, after failing to reach an agreement on the separate treatment of refugees fleeing from war. As a result, the cabinet became demissionary. Mark Rutte offered the resignation of the cabinet to the King on Saturday, 8 July. He announced his departure from politics altogether on Monday 10 July, bringing an end to more than thirteen years of his leadership of his party, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. Many opposition parties are hoping this signals the end of Rutte's style of politics in the Netherlands, which has been characterized as neoliberal and closed off from outsiders. Following Rutte's resignation, Wopke Hoekstra of the CDA also indicated he would not be available as party leader for the next election. Sigrid Kaag of D66 also announced her departure from politics; her reason for this was that death threats she had received had had a heavy negative impact on her and her family. Kaag was threatened at her home with torches earlier in the year.

The government becoming demissionary has consequences for a variety of measures that were meant to alleviate the current issues in the Netherlands. Any policy considered "controversial" will not be acted on and will be left to be decided by the upcoming election. This has resulted in a failure to reach new labour accords with the trade unions for higher wages and improved working conditions despite record profits for corporations; a failure to reach an accord with the agricultural sector, creating more uncertainty for farmers and uncertainty of attaining the nitrogen targets; and prolonging the housing shortage. Nevertheless, the NRC reported the demissionary status of the cabinet had a more limited impact compared to the past with several ministers introducing new legislative proposals. By March 2024, 61 subjects had been declared controversial compared to 300–400 in the two preceding demissionary periods.

A general election was held on 22 November 2023 in accordance with the Dutch Electoral Act mandating a prompt vote. In the months following the election, three cabinet members of D66 stepped down to pursue other opportunities: State Secretary for Culture and Media Gunay Uslu became CEO of Corendon, Minister of Finance Sigrid Kaag returned to diplomacy at the United Nations, and Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport Ernst Kuipers left for an unspecified international job. Former state secretary Steven van Weyenberg succeeded Uslu, but he was picked a month later to fill the Minister of Finance vacancy. Fleur Gräper subsequently became the new State Secretary for Culture and Media. Kaag's second position of Deputy Prime Minister was taken over by Rob Jetten. Rutte called the departures unfortunate but individually explainable and said he was not concerned. Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Liesje Schreinemacher became the first minister in Dutch history to go on maternity leave in December 2023, and she was temporarily replaced by Geoffrey van Leeuwen.

The fourth Rutte cabinet was dissolved upon the swearing in of the Schoof cabinet on 2 July 2024.