Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders railed against Ukrainian refugees on Feb. 19, saying that they are coming to the Netherlands for "free housing, free healthcare, and our jobs."
Wilders, whose Party for Freedom (PVV) party won 37 of 150 seats in parliamentary elections in November 2023, has long been vocally anti-immigration but has also made a number of statements in favor of Russia and against the Netherlands continuing to provide support to Ukraine.
Wilders has so far been unable to find coalition partners and form a government. In the interim, Dutch foreign policy remains in the hands of the current government under Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Wilders said that Ukrainians are coming to the Netherlands not to flee from the full-scale war but instead to receive benefits from the Dutch government.
"The Netherlands is once again the village idiot of Europe," Wilders said.
Wilders was responding to an article by the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf published on Feb. 19, in which an official in charge of refugees in the city of Utrecht said that facilities were reaching capacity.
This was in part due to an increasing influx of men coming from other EU countries in search of job opportunities, the official said.
Estimates of the number of Ukrainian refugees in the Netherlands vary, but De Telegraaf wrote that 99% of spaces of the 90,000 refugee registration centers are currently occupied.
The EU agreed in October 2023 to extend temporary protections for Ukrainian refugees in member states until March 2025.
Elsa Court
