The 81 political parties who have registered for the election in March have just a few hours left to confirm their lists of candidates.

The electoral council (Kiesraad) expects several new groups to fall short of the criteria which it set in an attempt to check the proliferation of parties in recent years.

New parties must pay a deposit of €11,250 and produce at least 580 written declarations of support, spread across 20 districts, to qualify for the election. The deadline to do this is 5pm on January 30. An analysis by AD predicted that at least 30 of the 66 newcomers would fall short of the required standard.

Among those struggling to make the cut are GeenPeil, which successfully ran the campaign to trigger last year’s referendum on the EU’s treaty with Ukraine, Healthy Earth and De Republikeinen (The Republicans).

The official list of parties will be published on Friday. If more than 32 parties are eligible to put candidates up for election the council will have to devise a new, larger, ballot paper.