“Relief For Europe”: Wall Street Analysts React To The Dutch Election

While some were worried about an “unexpected outcome” from yesterday’s Dutch general election, in the end the country’s center-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte managed to fight off the challenge of anti-Islam, anti-EU rival Geert Wilders to score an election victory that was hailed across Europe on Thursday by governments facing a rising wave of nationalism.
Rutte received congratulations from European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who faces a strong Social Democrat challenge in a September election and has shed some support to an anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany, which is set to enter the federal parliament for the first time. Merkel told Rutte: “I look forward to continuing our good cooperation as friends, neighbors, Europeans,” her spokesman said. While Rutte won fewer seats than in the last parliament, he still declared it an “evening in which the Netherlands, after Brexit, after the American elections, said ‘stop’ to the wrong kind of populism.”
The vote result was a disappointment for Wilders, who had led in opinion polls until late in the campaign and had hoped to pull off an anti-establishment triumph in the first of three key elections in the European Union this year.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Mar 16, 2017.