Dutch government resigns due to administrative scandal
A picture of members of the resigned Dutch government.
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Yesterday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced the resignation of his government due to a widespread scandal in which thousands of families were wrongly accused of fraud.
Rutte announced in a press conference the government's resignation, which comes two months before the legislative elections and in the midst of a health crisis.
Thousands of families were wrongly accused of obtaining social assistance fraudulently, and were forced to return them, plunging many of them into serious financial problems.
Many of them also faced racial discrimination based on dual nationalities.
The four ruling center-right parties met earlier to discuss a possible resignation, while Mark Rutte, prime minister since 2010 and one of the EU’s longest-serving leaders, announced that he would run for a fourth term.
A parliamentary investigation report published in December confirmed that officials ended the allowances of thousands of families wrongly accused of fraud between 2013 and 2019, before forcing them to return the money they received over several years, in amounts that in some cases reached tens of thousands of euros.
A number of senior political leaders, including several ministers, are accused in their posts of having preferred to overlook this defect that they were aware of.
The case comes two months before legislative elections to be held on March 17th.
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