Dutch PM in crisis talks to prevent government collapse

THE HAGUE: Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten was to hold crisis talks with key partners Friday in a last-ditch bid to save his minority coalition government from collapse only nine months after taking power.

An unseemly political row over tax policy has raised the spectre of snap elections in the European Union’s fifth-largest economy and weakened the centrist Jetten, the country’s youngest-ever prime minister.

Since winning a razor-thin election, Jetten’s D66 party has been in an uneasy three-way coalition with the center-right CDA and the right-wing VVD.

After months of complex debate over tax policy, the D66 and CDA struck a deal with the opposition left-wing PRO party, enraging the VVD.