The Party for Freedom (, ; PVV) is a nationalist, right-wing populist political party in the Netherlands.
Founded in 2006 as the successor to Geert Wilders' one-man faction in the House of Representatives, it won nine seats in the 2006 general election making it the fifth-largest party in parliament. In the 2010 general election it won 24 seats, making it the third-largest party. At that time the PVV agreed to support the minority government led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte without having PVV ministers in the cabinet. However, the PVV withdrew its support in April 2012 due to differences over budget cuts at the Catshuis. In the following 2012 Dutch general election it won 15 seats, having lost 9 seats in the elections, still being the third-largest party. Following the elections, the party returned to the opposition and in the 2017 election, the Party for Freedom won 20 seats, making it the second-largest party in Parliament. It came third in the 2014 European Parliament election, winning four out of 26 seats.
The PVV calls for items like administrative detention and a strong assimilationist stance on the integration of immigrants into Dutch society, differing from the established centre-right parties in the Netherlands (like the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, VVD). The PVV has also proposed banning the Quran and shutting down all mosques in the Netherlands. In addition, the party is consistently Eurosceptic and since early July 2012, according to the platform it presented prior to elections in September, it strongly advocates withdrawal from the European Union.
Party for Freedom is an association with Geert Wilders as its sole member; thus the party is ineligible for Dutch government funding, and relies on donations.
History
2004–2005
The party's history began with Geert Wilders' departure from the VVD in September 2004. Wilders could not accept the VVD's positive stance towards Turkey's possible accession to the European Union, and left the party.
Although the VVD expected Wilders to return his parliamentary seat to the party, he refused, and continued to sit in parliament as a one-man party, Groep Wilders (Wilders Group).
In June 2005, Wilders was one of the leaders in the campaign against the European Constitution, which was rejected by Dutch voters by 62%.
2006–2010
On 22 February 2006, the Party for Freedom was registered with the Electoral Council.
Bart Jan Spruyt, director of the conservative Edmund Burke Foundation, joined Wilders in January 2006 in order to formulate a party programme and to train its prospective representatives for the forthcoming national election (then still scheduled for 2007). Spruyt left the party in the summer of 2006 after it proved unable to build broad conservative backing, and people like Joost Eerdmans and Marco Pastors proved unwilling to join. After the 2006 elections, Spruyt said he was not surprised that the Party for Freedom had gained seats but maintained that, if the Party for Freedom had sought cooperation with Eerdmans and Pastors, it would have won more, even enough to bring about a CDA-VVD majority government. Later, Spruyt commented that the PVV had a 'natural tendency' toward fascism. He later qualified the statement, though he didn't withdraw it. Former PVV candidate Lucas Hartong called Spruyt's claims 'a cheap insinuation'.
In an HP/De Tijd profile dated December 2006, the party was described as a cult, with an extremely distrustful Wilders only accepting fellow candidates completely loyal to him, and compared the PVV to the Socialist Party led by Jan Marijnissen but without reaching that degree of organisational perfection.
On 10 January 2007, the PVV announced it would not field candidates at the forthcoming Provincial elections. This meant it would be unrepresented in the Senate.