NSC loses last seat in parliament as MEP Dirk Gotink quits party

The last elected politician representing Nieuw Sociaal Contract (NSC), the party formed three years ago by former CDA MP Pieter Omtzigt, has resigned in a row over whether to work with a new hardline Eurosceptic group.

Dirk Gotink, NSC’s only member in the European Parliament, said the decision to explore a possible collaboration with Mona Keijzer’s Project 2029, a right-wing conservative movement that sees the European Union as a federal superstate in the making.

Gotink, 45, said in a post on LinkedIn that seeking closer ties with Keijzer, another former Christian Democrat (CDA) MP, was “incomprehensible”.

“When it comes to Europe, we take a very different stance,” he said. “For me the EU is a precondition for our freedom and prosperity … Sowing doubt about the importance of the EU is not just irresponsible, but goes against the interests of the Netherlands.”

The party’s board said it had invited Keijzer to be a guest speaker at this weekend’s conference in Breda without any promise of entering into a formal partnership. But Gotink said the appearance of the former farmers’ party (BBB) housing minister was a “clear choice of political direction.”

NSC leaderless

Gotink has been the only NSC member in any parliament since the general election last October, when the party lost all 20 seats in the Dutch parliament that it won two years earlier, three months after its foundation. It has had no leader since Omtzigt’s successor, Eddy van Hijum, quit in January.

Gotink said he was grateful for the opportunity given him by Omtzigt, but he would be continuing as an independent MEP within the conservative EPP group.

“He redefined Christian Democrat thinking and tied it to tangible ideas such as basic living standards and the rule of law,” he told AD.nl. “He gave me the chance to contribute as an MEP. I am very grateful to him for that.”

Omtzigt founded NSC in August 2023 with a promise to make government in the Netherlands more accountable through constitutional reform and improve people’s basic standard of living (bestaanszekerheid).

Coalition with PVV

But after the party entered a coalition with the far-right PVV, the right-wing liberal VVD and the farmers’ party BBB, NSC fell apart under pressure from PVV leader Geert Wilders, who accused it of obstructing his asylum policies.

Omtzigt resigned as party leader and stepped down as an MP last year on health grounds, having taken several months off work with burnout symptoms. In a parting press conference he said the “poisonous” political climate in the Netherlands was preventing politicians tackling the country’s real problems.

Omtzigt had quit the CDA earlier in 2023 following a dispute with the party leadership, which wanted the campaigning backbench MP to be offered a “position elsewhere”.

His efforts to seek justice for families who were wrongly accused of benefit fraud in what became known as the toeslagenaffaire triggered the downfall of Mark Rutte’s third coalition government, which included the CDA, in 2021.

He stood for the leadership of the CDA in 2020 but lost narrowly to Hugo de Jonge, the health minister during the coronavirus pandemic. The third-placed candidate in that race was Mona Keijzer.