The chairman of the Dutch Socialist Party has said he will stand down when his current term of office expires at the end of this year.

Ron Meyer’s decision follows his party’s poor performance in three successive elections – the local elections last year and the provincial and European votes in 2019.

In particular Meyer said he considered himself to be personally responsible for the ‘painful’ collapse of SP support in last week’s EU elections, which saw the party lose all its representation in Brussels.

Parliamentary party leader Lilian Marijnissen, who described last week’s vote as an ‘enormous disappointment’, said she had no intention of resigning but admitted ‘mistakes were made in the campaign’.