Overview
- After days of late sessions, negotiators agreed the main lines of a coalition accord but left the financing package to be finalized and unveiled on Friday 30 January.
- The three parties aim to govern without a majority and say they will build shifting issue-by-issue majorities with partners from both the right and the left.
- Budget choices remain the central bottleneck, with higher NATO-related defense spending cited as a key driver of the fiscal squeeze.
- The parties also put forward a public broadcasting shake-up into four omroephuizen plus a NOS/NTR taakomroep, as MPs raise doubts about meeting a 2029 start and the demissionary minister declines to make substantive design choices.
- New polling shows D66 losing recent gains back to GroenLinks-PvdA as some voters see the emerging cabinet as too right-leaning, even as electorates of GroenLinks-PvdA and JA21 signal openness to back plans from a minority government.