If there was a sound effect for the new Dutch government’s coalition agreement, it would be the creak of a drawbridge being raised.

After decades in which the Netherlands prospered from being one of the most open, accessible and international economies in the world, the four right-wing parties say it is time, in their own words, to “turn a new corner”.

Extra barriers will be erected for newcomers, whether they be refugees, labour migrants or international students. Some will be literal – the government wants to explore restoring border checks and patrols and create “mini Schengen” zones.

Others will be administrative, such as a cap on international student numbers, or doubling the qualifying period for a Dutch passport to 10 years’ residency.

And within those tighter borders, Dutch farmers and fishers should be free once again to exercise their gezond boerenverstand – good old common sense – with minimal interference from European and international regulations.

The new cabinet wants to limit the number of protected conservation zones under EU law so that farmers can spread their manure freely again, introduce its own measure for nitrogen deposits and abandon compulsory buyouts for farmers.

Extraparliamentary cabinet

The biggest challenge for the four parties will be holding the coalition together for any length of time. The choice of a so-called “extraparliamentary cabinet” containing none of the party leaders was taken at the insistence of Pieter Omtzigt, leader of Nieuw Sociaal Contract, who has been wary of Geert Wilders’s attitude to constitutional rights.

The identity of the next prime minister remains the worst kept secret in The Hague. The final stage of the negotiations will be led not by the incoming premier, as is conventional, but by one of the mediators from the last round.

The lack of harmony between the parties was evident during Thursday’s launch, where they took to the stage separately to highlight their own priorities, and in the document itself, which contains the kind of violent shifts in tone and style rarely seen outside the Eurovision Song Contest.

Constitutional safeguards

Omtzigt appears to have got his way on institutional reforms to promote better governance, with measures such as a constitutional court, a regional voting system and powerful inspectorates to hold government agencies to account.

But some of the constitutional safeguards that will test the resolve of the coalition partners if events require a change of course.

Notably, there is a clause that requires the government to find additional spending cuts if it threatens to go over the EU’s budget deficit limit of 3%. This is exactly the measure that triggered the collapse of Mark Rutte’s first cabinet in 2012, when Wilders refused to sign off a €17 billion austerity package after months of negotiations.

Strict asylum plans

Unsurprisingly, the most radical plans are on immigration, where the PVV leader has vowed to push through “the strictest approach to asylum ever”.

Wilders was prepared to sacrifice just about everything else for a tougher immigration regime, including his own chances of being prime minister – though critics will argue that many of those plans, such as Nexit and banning the Koran, stood no chance of becoming law.

Current asylum applications will be put on hold, refugees will lose the right to be joined by their families, except for dependent children, and accommodation facilities will be as sparse as possible.

The government is also scrapping the so-called “spreading law” designed to ease congestion at the asylum reception centre in Ter Apel by imposing quotas on local councils.

Legal challenges

It is a bitter blow for the outgoing asylum minister, Eric van der Burg, who fought a hard battle to pass the law through both houses of parliament. It will also almost certainly lead to more overcrowding in the short term at Ter Apel, where the government faces a €15,000 fine for every day that the centre goes over capacity.

Wilders said that the stringent asylum rules would have a “huge demotivating effect” on refugees coming to the Netherlands, though the experience of other countries, such as the UK, is that the impact is minimal.

Some of the more controversial measures may face legal challenges. The cabinet wants to declare a crisis in the asylum system, which would allow it to suspend some of its international obligations to take in refugees.

Van der Burg warned last year that the bottleneck in the Dutch system was caused by systemic problems rather than an international emergency, such as war or flooding, and would not qualify as a crisis under European rules.

Climate change

Similarly, the government’s hopes of obtaining an opt-out from the European Commission on migration quotas is already hanging by a thread, as it would require a renegotiation of the EU’s treaties by all 27 member states.

But it is not only on asylum that the new cabinet represents a hard turn to the right. The Netherlands will dampen its efforts on climate change, nature conservation and the energy transition and take a more Eurosceptic line in Brussels, where it promises to be “very critical of further expansion of the European Union”.

Households will no longer be obliged to replace their old boilers with hybrid heat pumps from 2026, tax incentives to buy electric cars are being dampened down and new wind farms will only be built offshore – and then only if they do not upset the fishing industry.

The new cabinet wants to lobby Brussels to bring back pulse fishing, which was banned by the EU in 2021. But there is little goodwill left after Dutch civil servants were caught skewing the figures to boost the number of pulse fishing permits issued before the ban came in.

Tax cuts

Much of the spending plans still need to be filled in, but the cabinet has promised €2 billion in tax cuts for middle-income earners through an extra income tax band and virtually free childcare for working families.

Energy and fuel taxes will also either be cut or have existing concessions extended. However, there will be no increase in the minimum wage and the period covered by unemployment insurance is likely to be cut from two years to 18 months.

The left-wing opposition has criticised the agreement an essentially neoliberal programme that will leave the poorest and most vulnerable worse off, despite Omtzigt’s promises to make bestaanszekerheid, or a secure basic standard of living, a priority.

They also criticise the plan to give company directors and major shareholders a 2% income tax cut, while civil servants are having their pay frozen.

“Built on quicksand”

Frans Timmermans, leader of GL-PvdA alliance, said it was “disastrous for employees, disastrous for the government and built on quicksand.”

Other policies risk conflicting with each other, such as the pledge to raise the motorway speed limit to 130 km/h again.

The daytime limit of 100 km/h was brought in five years ago so that the construction industry could keep running following the Council of State’s decision on nitrogen compound emissions. Yet the plans still contain a commitment to build 100,000 new homes a year.