Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten emerged on Friday, 13 November 2026, from seven hours of talks with no deal and no resignation. The minority cabinet is still standing, for now, and the negotiations continue over the weekend, DutchNews reported. Jetten called in Dilan Yesilgöz, the VVD leader and defence minister, and Christian Democrat deputy prime minister Bart van den Brink.

The row began on Thursday night, when the lower house voted on the tax plan and the wealth proposal known as box 3. The VVD says that vote broke the coalition agreement. Jetten’s D66 and the CDA accepted higher taxes on wealth in exchange for left-wing opposition support for the 2027 tax plan. The VVD opposed the change and voted against its own government’s bill, which still passed by a narrow majority with opposition votes, The Straits Times reported. Before the meeting, The Jakarta Post described a quarrel that had raised the prospect of a snap election.

The coalition holds 66 of 150 seats. Jetten, 39, the country’s youngest prime minister, has led an uneasy trio for about nine months: D66, the CDA and the right-wing VVD, after a razor-thin election win. To pass laws he needs smaller parties or the opposition. Fifteen parties sit in parliament.

After the talks, Yesilgöz called the minority cabinet “a failed experiment” and said a collapse was “a possible solution,” while adding that nobody wants another campaign. Before the vote she had said her partners blindsided the VVD with a proposal that, in her party’s view, jeopardises stability, growth and the business climate. Jetten admitted that “things have not gone well recently” and that this is damaging relations. “That can and must be better: substantively, politically, and personally.” If the meeting had ended on Friday, “it could have gone wrong,” he said.

At the press conference after the cabinet meeting, Jetten said the conversation started at 11:30 and was still going at 19:30. They did not walk out slamming the door, which he took as a sign that the three parties still want to work for the country. The cabinet will defend the tax plan and the box 3 bill in the Senate. He wants serious talks in the coming days, because, as he put it, the ideal is to go in together and come out together.

VVD sources told De Telegraaf that no progress was made and the impasse continues. A fresh election would not be automatic: the parties could try to build another government from the current lower house, most likely another minority. The left-wing opposition party PRO ruled that option out on Thursday, The Jakarta Post reported.

The same polls, cited by The Jakarta Post, put Jesse Klaver, PRO’s leader, ahead of the far-right PVV of Geert Wilders. Wilders said: “This coalition is effectively dead. We just have to wait for the funeral to take place.” He triggered the 2025 election when he pulled his party out of government in a fight over immigration.

Image: Wikimedia Commons — the Binnenhof, The Hague (Hubertl, CC BY-SA 4.0). The photo shows the parliament complex, not Friday’s meeting.

Sources consulted: Dutch PM in crisis talks to prevent a government collapse — The Jakarta Post; Jetten cabinet survives the crisis talks for now, deadlock continues — DutchNews.nl; Crisis talks continue over the weekend to avert a collapse — The Straits Times; Prime minister Jetten’s press conference, 13 November 2026 — Rijksoverheid.