The result assures Mr Rutte the first shot at forming a government, although with no obvious majority, coalition talks may take months. "Dutch voters rejected populism and voted for Europe," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. "What a celebration it was for democracy today," Mr Rutte told supporters in The Hague. Dutch voters still punished Mr Rutte’s coalition of Liberals and the Labor Party. Polls on the eve of the election suggested a dispute with Turkey that Mr Rutte was deemed to have handled well accelerated the trend.

Source: Bangkok Post March 16, 2017 10:30 UTC