Campaigns test character under pressure and over time. On Wednesday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte passed that test easily. According to provisional results, he won with a 13-seat margin against his nearest challenger, Geert Wilders – particularly impressive, given how close the polls were just a week ago.

Rutte’s victory can be attributed to his touting his successful economic record, an economy on the upswing, and a commitment to limited but real European integration. The coalition he will have to seek will continue to build upon those issues, which facing a serious challenge to integrate new immigrants and deal with a potentially explosive social issue.

On a visceral level, Rutte’s entire campaign contrasted action with rhetoric. His cryptic campaign slogan – “Normaal. Doen.” (Act. Normal.) – was plastered in posters on bus stops across the country, emphasized precisely that. On the one hand the slogan made a subtle reference to an article Rutte had published in major newspapers January 23, in which he had argued that immigrants should “act normal or go away.” On the other hand, the poster also harked back to a famous run-in in parliament with Geert Wilders in 2011. Wilders had lashed out...

Carnival celebrations in the southern provinces of Limburg and Noord-Brabant have ended. Reality is setting in, and we now find ourselves in the final stretch toward the Dutch parliamentary elections on March 15. TV and radio are saturated with political talk shows and interviews, but the outcome of the elections remains far from clear. Polls show Geert Wilders winning a considerable amount of votes, but his PVV will most likely end up in the opposition, just like the radical Socialist Party (SP) of Jan Marijnissen in 2006. What will that mean for the people of the Netherlands, the European Union, and the future of the transatlantic alliance?

One economic program, targeted to help Dutch suffering from high unemployment rates to work in a neighboring country, may hold the key to the election and to maintaining the Netherlands’ place in the international order.  

The role of ‘flyover country’

Removing obstacles for Dutch citizens in border provinces to enter the job market in Germany has become a priority in recent years. This was originally born out of necessity to fight high unemployment in the provinces, since the unemployment rate in Niedersachsen, just across the border, is much lower. In schools across...