Do we like Dick Schoof?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A decent, careful operator with no harmful words of his own, held back by the far-right company in the cabinet he led.
Dick Schoof was the unlikely face of Dutch politics: a career civil servant with no party membership, picked to lead a coalition built around Geert Wilders's far-right PVV. Wilders himself wasn't in the cabinet, so Schoof was the safe, grey, steady bloke fronting a very loud show. His time as PM ended in early 2026, so there's nothing hot and fresh on him lately.
The first big stoush came within days of the swearing-in. Two PVV ministers, Marjolein Faber and Reinette Klever, had talked about “omvolking”, the Dutch term for the great replacement theory. Both said they'd distanced themselves from the word, but the opposition accused Schoof of tolerating conspiratorial and racist remarks. Schoof said the government opposes discrimination and racism, and Wilders then slammed him for not defending his ministers.
That's the harm check in a nutshell: nothing nasty from Schoof's own mouth that we could find, but he chose to lead, and keep leading, a government with those ministers and a hardline asylum agenda. Defenders would say a civil servant's job is to make the coalition work. Critics would say the company is the problem. We'd call it an asterisk, not a fail, because the record is thin on his own words.
The cabinet fell in June 2025 when Wilders pulled the PVV out, saying the other parties hadn't backed his asylum crackdown. Schoof announced he would step down and stayed on in a caretaker role. Afterwards he blamed the divide between the cabinet and four very different coalition parties, saying he wasn't singling out any one group.
The caretaker months were arguably his best. In July 2025 his government banned Israeli ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir from entering the country, tightened arms export rules, added humanitarian aid and pushed for EU measures over Gaza. Israel's president called the move a “huge mistake”, while huge crowds in The Hague had been demanding sanctions. Where you land depends on whether you read it as overdue backbone or as a diplomatic blowup.
Even in caretaker mode the government pressed on with laws to limit asylum, with a majority of MPs backing that. That's a policy many on this page will dislike, though it's the coalition's agenda rather than anything Schoof said about people. He didn't use his platform to demean anyone that we found.