In their attempt to convince us that we should acquire the much-publicized “culture of cooperation”<\/b> in Greece as well, the architects of chaos advertise examples from the most advanced European countries. <\/p>\n
In reality they are advertising a nightmare, as governments of cooperation<\/b> lead to early elections, incoherence, opportunistic alliances and a worsening economic situation. <\/p>\nDenmark: Early elections and stalled talks<\/h3>\n
In Denmark, Social Democrat Prime Minister Mete Frederiksen<\/b> called early elections (24 March 2026), believing she would gain from her stance towards the US on the Greenland issue. The result was that 12 parties<\/b> re-entered parliament, neither of the two main blocs (the red and blue) secured the 91 seats needed for a decree, the defunct coalition of parties lost 19 seats, Ms. Frederiksen suffered their biggest defeat since… 1903, taking just 38 seats (her party went from 27.5% in the 2022 elections to 21.8% and found itself 12 seats short), the extremes<\/b> (left and far-right, with the latter, the Danish People’s Party, tripling its seats, winning 9.1% of the vote), the Moderates became a buffer and negotiations to form a government have been blocked. <\/p>\n
All this despite the fact that Fredericsen had promised tax-free benefits (335 to 669 euros) to two million households to cope with the rising cost of living<\/b>. Moreover, what she considered the “crown jewel” of her election campaign, a pledge to impose a “wealth tax” thanks to which she would raise around 800 million euros to finance social policies, ended up beating the negotiations<\/b> to form a government. Frederiksen has hit a wall, as on this issue she is supported only by left-wing parties, which are not sufficient to form a majority. On May Day, the Prime Minister was forced to abandon her proposal in order to facilitate the negotiations. <\/p>\nGreenland: The government of national unity has fallen! <\/h3>\n
At the same time, the call for early elections in Denmark destabilized the threatened Greenland, when the social democratic Siumut party withdrew from the governing coalition, demanding that the ministers who would take part in the Danish elections (Greenland is represented in the Copenhagen region with two seats)<\/b>. In the end in Greenland both the government fell and the two candidate ministers were not elected to the Danish Parliament! We are talking about a four-party government that was formed after the 11 March 2025 elections and included all parties represented in Parliament except the nationalist Naleraq, which favours rapid independence from Denmark. And yet, the Greenlandic Social Democrats managed to cause a government crisis and bring down a government of national unity, even though they have just four seats in the 31-member Greenlandic Parliament!<\/p>\nSweden: Minority government under the gaze of the far-right<\/h3>\n
Sweden<\/b> Sweden<\/b> experienced three government crises in 2022. They manage to survive because there a majority is guaranteed if 175 MPs don’t vote against the government. That is why when tolerance is secured by the necessary number of MPs, minority governments succeed (even with only 100 votes in parliament, as happened in November 2021 when Anderson formed a government).<\/p>\n
The same happened in October 2022, when Wolf Kristerson<\/b>, leader of the Moderates, formed a minority government with the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, and with Jimmy Akesson’s far-right Swedish Democrats<\/b> party, the Swedish Democrats, not participating in the government but offering its acquiescence. However, in the September 2026 election, things will get more difficult, as Akeson has signaled that he will seek ministerial seats for his party. He is already in second place in the polls, with the Social Democrats leading the way. That means it is unknown how the next Swedish government will be formed.<\/p>\n Netherlands: The chaos of talks and departures in… installments<\/h3>\n
In The Netherlands, Rutte’s fourth government fell in July 2023, 543 days after being sworn in. In 2017, negotiations for the third Rutte government had taken 225 days. After her resignation on 15 January 2021 and the elections on 17 March, it took 271 days for the country to get the fourth Rutte government. <\/p>\n
Nine months of negotiations were conducted by the same parties that had been in coalition three other times! The first Rutte government had fallen after 557 days, when far-right Gert Wilders<\/b> had withdrawn his tolerance. The only time a Rutte government completed its term was the second. After elections in November 2023, an agreement on a government was reached in May 2024. The election was led by the far-right party (PVV) of Gert Wilders. And as elections were not allowed to be held again before October 2025, a government was formed by the far-right party, the People’s Party (VVD), the populist Peasants’ Party (PVV) and the newly formed Eurosceptic New Social Contract party, of which the now former Foreign Minister, Veldkamp, is a founding member.<\/b> In order to prevent the far-right Wilders from becoming prime minister, it was agreed that Dick Schuff,<\/b> a former senior civil servant, would be sworn in as prime minister. <\/p>\n
In June 2025, the far-right Wilders resigned from the government because, he said, the agreement to deal with migration was not being met. Schuff submitted his resignation to the king and remained as caretaker. This was followed, in August 2025, by the departure of the populist New Social Contract party (because the Cabinet did not agree on anti-Israel measures) and the country was literally left in the air<\/b>: 15 months after the – after much toil and suffering – formation of a government, they were out of eight key ministers and deputy ministers. <\/p>\n
In the October 2025 elections, first came Rob Yete’s centrist D66 party<\/b>, who was sworn in as prime minister at the end of February, after 117 days of negotiations, forming a minority government with two centre-right parties – with the VVD liberals, led by Dilan Gesilgoz<\/b>, and with the Christian Democratic CDA, a centre-right party led by Henry Bottenbal<\/b>. But those three parties together won 66 seats, far fewer than the majority in the 150-member Dutch parliament. That means that in parliament the minority coalition must seek case-by-case majorities to get laws passed. Huge difficulties when you consider that 17 parties have entered the Dutch parliament, and in the election, Gert Wilders’ far-right party came second.<\/p>\nBelgium: World record for negotiation<\/h3>\n
The world record for negotiation time<\/b> is held by Belgium, which in 2010-2011 took 541 days of negotiations to form a seven-party government, and on 30 September 2020, 652 days after the last non-bureaucratic government and 500 days since the May 2019 election, there was an agreement to form a government. On 3 February 2025, a full eight months after the 9 June 2024 elections, Belgium finally had a five-party government. The Prime Minister was the leader of the conservative and nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), Bart de Vever<\/b>, and his allies were the French-speaking MR (Liberals) party, the Flemish Christian Democrats CD&V party, the French-speaking centrist party Les Engag\u00e9s and the Flemish socialists Vooruit, the only left-wing partner in the governing coalition. Together they bring together 81 of the 150 seats in the Belgian Parliament. <\/p>\n
However, last year, for months all these parties could not agree on the 2026 budget, leading the prime minister to set a deadline for agreement by Christmas 2025, otherwise the country would be headed for elections again. Finally in late November they agreed amidst three days of protests to prevent VAT from being raised. By 2025 the deficit had risen to 5.2% of GDP and international agency Moody’s had downgraded the Belgian economy’s credit rating from Aa3 to A1,<\/b> for the first time in 15 years, due to high borrowing costs, rising public debt and the strain on the social security system due to an ageing population. <\/p>\nIreland: Minority government on the… hunt for independents! <\/h3>\n
In Ireland, after the 29 November 2024 elections, an agreement was reached (15\/1\/2025) between the two centre-right parties (Fiana Fale and Finne Gael). However, the two parties together have 87 seats, one short of an absolute majority. Thus, the government relies on the marginal votes of nine independent MPs. <\/p>\n
In Iceland, in October 2024, the left (Left-Greens)-centre-right (Progress Party) coalition collapsed over disagreements on a range of issues, from foreign policy to immigration and energy policy, as well as inflation, accuracy and housing. In the elections of 30 November 2024, the Social Democrats won, and on 21 December a government was formed with the Social Democratic Alliance, the centrist People’s Party and the left-wing pro-European Reform Party, led by the 36-year-old youngest prime minister in the world Christstad Frostadotir.<\/b> The point is that the previous government had also fallen due to disagreements between the partners, namely between the left and the right. Disagreements that are hard to bridge… <\/p>\n
Tomorrow: Austria, Portugal, Spain<\/b><\/p>\n In their attempt to convince us that we must acquire the much-publicised “culture of cooperation” in Greece, the architects of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"