Anti-Libyan refugee plan stopped Dutch government formation?

This 7 June 2019 British TV video says about itself:

Starvation, disease and death in Libyan migrant detention centre

Channel 4 News has obtained shocking pictures from inside the camp, showing just how perilous the situation has become.

The UN describe the conditions as inhuman and degrading. There’s little water, food is scarce and disease is rampant.

This is the Zintan detention centre in Libya, where things have got so desperate that the migrants from across Africa being held there are organising protests.

Warning: there are distressing images in this report.

Another video used to say about itself:

24 January 2017

Shocking torture of Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants in Libyan prison.

Dutch NOS TV reports today about talks about forming a new coalition government.

To form a government with a majority in parliament, because of recent general election results in the Netherlands there needs to be a coalition of at least four political parties.

Two months ago, four parties started negotiating about forming such a coalition government: the VVD (pro-Big Business); CDA (Christian conservatives); D66 (centrist) and GroenLinks (GL; Green Left).

This week, these negotiations failed. The parties involved were secretive why. They only said there was disagreement about immigration. VVD and CDA wanted to make immigration policies harsher; D66 and GroenLinks not.

What exactly in immigration policy led to the break up of the negotiations? NOS TV today claims it was about a possible European Union deal with Libya (and other dictatorially ruled African countries) to send refugees back. See also here.

The model for such an agreement would be the dodgy anti-refugee deal between the European Union and the Erdogan regime in Turkey. After the European Union sends refugees back to Turkey, the Turkish government sends refugees, forced back by the European Union, further to the wars in Syria, Afghanistan, wherever the refugees fled from.

European Union boss Juncker wants such an anti-refugee deal with Libya. In the coalition negotiations, according to the NOS, VVD and CDA said that the new Dutch government should agree with that. GroenLinks and D66 thought that might conflict with international treaties, signed by the Netherlands, about refugees’ rights.

The deal with Turkey is still just acceptable under international law, according to GroenLinks,

Really, GroenLinks? Jurists deny that.

because Turkey can be regarded as a safe country …

Really, GroenLinks? Courts of justice, and the Obama administration in the USA deny that.

But that is not the case for Libya and other North African countries.

Indeed, GroenLinks. There are at least three governments in Libya, killing each other’s fighters and many civilians. With whom in Libya would an anti-refugee deal be?

D66 is said to have agreed with GL on this point, but they did not want it to cause a break [with CDA and VVD].

So, probably, there will now be more negotiations, between VVD, CDA, D66 and another fourth party.

Some sources of the NOS news item say the Libya deal was not the only issue between the four negotiating parties. There were also other points, on immigration and on other issues.

GL had electoral reasons not to give in to the hard-line anti-refugee policies of VVD and CDA. A few years ago, when they were an opposition party, they helped the then VVD-CDA minority coalition government to a parliamentary majority to send Dutch soldiers to the Afghan war. Many GroenLinks voters did not like that militarism. GroenLinks lost many votes and MPs at the next election.

Later, the social democrat PvdA party became the junior partner in a coalition government with the VVD (which at the moment is still the post-election caretaker government). So many leftist voters became so sick of the PvdA ministers enabling VVD austerity and militarism policies that the recent elections were catastrophic for the PvdA: from 38 to 9 MPS.

If GroenLinks would have joined now the proposed four party coalition, agreeing with the Libyan anti-refugee deal and other right-wing policies, then the next elections would probably have been very catastrophic for GL.