Five parties have agreed to form a coalition government in Rotterdam led by the left-wing PRO, three months after the local elections in March.
PRO won 11 of the 45 seats at the election, the same number as the right-wing populist Leefbaar Rotterdam, which headed the previous coalition, but with a larger share of the vote.
The coalition also includes the liberal parties D66 and VVD, who each won five seats, and the Christian Democrats and Volt, with one councillor each. The combined total of 23 seats gives the five parties a majority of just one seat.
The new administration’s programme is expected to include plans to invest in housing, including a target of 4,500 new homes a year, two-thirds of which will be affordable homes.
The parties also want to develop the port area and spend €30 million on creating a low-traffic city centre by pedestrianising streets such as Witte de Withstraat and Meent.
The coalition agreement, which is also expected to include measures to tackle homelessness and public safety, is due to be presented by the end of the week.
Youth care costs
The parties will also need to find extra money to cover a shortfall in the budget for youth care after it emerged during negotiations that the costs were tens of millions of euros higher than previously estimated.
The administration will have 10 executive officers or aldermen, the maximum allowed by law, with the two one-man parties each having one alderman who will take 95% of a full-time salary to keep within the limit of 9.9 full-time officers.
The composition of the executive team has already drawn criticism from D66, one of the coalition parties, after it emerged that only one of the 10 is likely to come from a minority ethnic community.
“A city administration with almost exclusively whiite people is unacceptable in 2026 as far as I’m concerned,” said D66 councillor Joan Nunnely. “A diverse city requires an administration that reflects its population.”
Denk dropped
An earlier round of coalition talks with VVD, D66 and Denk, whose support comes mostly from migrant communities, broke down when the right-wing VVD walked out a month ago.
Party leader Tim Versnel said a coalition including two left-wing parties, PRO and Denk, could not “realise our ambitions for the cities in the coming years”.
D66 and PRO agreed to drop Denk from the negotiations and bring in the two one-man parties, the centre-right CDA and pro-European Volt.
PRO leader Jeroen Postma said relations between his party and the VVD had “taken a hit”, but insisted: “It is my conviction that we can and most overcome our differences for the future of our great city”.
Denk leader Faouzi Achbar reserved his strongest criticism for D66. “I read that D66 also thought it was pretty left-leaning. I wonder what exactly they meant by that,” he said. “Too much anti-poverty? I thought D66 was a progressive party.”
