Rutte wins Dutch elections

(ANSA) - Rome, March 2016 - Premier Paolo Gentiloni said Tuesday night he was "pleased" with the election result in the Netherlands which saw Geert Wilder's Freedom Party, frontrunners in the pre-election polls, defeated by incumbent Premier Mark Rutte's Liberals.
    "The anti-EU populist right has been stopped, and now we must relaunch the EU," said Gentiloni. Former premier and ex-leader of the ruling centre-left Democratic Party Matteo Renzi also said he was "satisfied that the populist wave was stopped". However, rightwing populist anti-euro and anti-immigrant Northern League leader Matteo Salvini hailed the increase in Wilders' vote.
    "Good ideas are growing," he said.
    "Wilders came second - I'd like to lose like that".
    Rutte's Liberals won the elections with 21.2% of the vote and 33 seats out of 150, banishing the spectre of a win by the Islamophobic anti-EU populists of Wilders, whose Freedom Party came second with 13.1% and 20 seats, a a shade ahead of the Christian Democrats and the Left Liberals, which got 19 seats each. The Greens made a big advance while an anti-racist party, Denk, got into parliament for the first time in Europe.