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Iran appears to ease internet blackout as cost of shutdown mounts

Iranian authorities appear to have relaxed – but not removed – internet restrictions, in what experts say is a sign of the mounting costs of the most severe internet blackout the regime has ever imposed. “There seems to be a real patchwork of connectivity. I think if most people have access, it’s some kind of degraded service,” said Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Kentik. “It’s almost like they’re developing a content blocking system by trial and error.” On Wednesday, previously unavailable Iranian Telegram channels came back online. Data from Cloudflare and Kentik show that an uneven restoration of internet traffic to Iran began on Tuesday morning – reaching about 60% of pre-shutdown levels at one point. The pattern of this internet traffic did not follow a smooth curve, Madory said, but rather had jagged peaks, indicating authorities were likely continuing to throttle connections. A report from Filterwatch, an organisation monitoring Iran’s internet traffic, suggests that certain services, such as Google, Bing and ChatGPT, are now available to some users on a province-to-province basis, but many are unstable and many social media and messaging platforms remain unusable. Iran’s internet shutdown began on 8 January, after nearly two weeks of escalating anti-government protests. The blackout has become one of the defining features of what may be the bloodiest weeks in Iran’s recent history. It has helped obscure extreme violence against Iran’s population, with accounts of mass burials and truckloads of bodies filtering out of the country only sporadically, and often days late, through journalists, activists and a few Telegram channels. It has also likely cost Iranian authorities a great deal of money due to lost economic output, with whole sectors of the economy unable to work. Despite the regime’s efforts to whitelist certain websites and fine-tune their internet blockade, Iranian authorities have still said the shutdown has cost them up to $36m each day, according to a recent estimate by a government minister. This is on a par with previous research that has estimated the cost of various global internet blackouts to be hundreds of millions of dollars. The OECD put the cost of Egypt’s 2011 internet shutdown during the height of Tahrir protests at $90m. A report from an Iranian news outlet, confirmed by Iranian digital rights researchers, describes Iranian CEOs gathering in the dining hall of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce this week to access the internet – with all of their activity monitored by the government. Demand was so great that each businessperson was restricted to half an hour of access. One described the environment as “like an internet cafe from the 1980s or a university campus”. Two weeks ago, Iranian authorities appeared determined to continue the blackout for some time, perhaps indefinitely, with a government spokesperson reportedly saying the internet would be restricted until at least Nowruz, the Persian new year, on 20 March. Madory said authorities apppeared to be adjusting the shutdown, but not with an intention to end it. “It’s definitely not restored to pre-8 January levels,” he said. “Every day is different. Even within a day, it’s not consistent. It appears like they’re just developing this on the fly.”

Nato needs to be ‘reimagined’ with Europe showing more capabilities, says Marco Rubio – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! US state secretary Marco Rubio has said that Nato “needs to be re-imagined,” saying that European allies need to rapidly increase their defence capabilities to be able to offer genuine security guarantees and reassurance even without the US backstop (17:07). Ramping up pressure on European partners, Rubio said they have “not invested enough in their own defence” over the last few decades, noting that “hopefully that is changing”. Rubio also said he was confident of getting to a “positive resolution” on Greenland, as “professional” talks get under way, away from “a media circus” to help with both sides’ flexibility in negotiations (17:10). His comments come as the Danish and Greenlandic prime ministers continue their tour of European capitals to show solidarity with the territory, visiting France’s Emmanuel Macron earlier today (12:54, 14:14, 15:51). They also come amid media reports that a Trump-allied Slovak prime minister Robert Fico was “shocked” and “worried” by Trump’s “psychological state” after meeting him in US earlier this month, a claim promptly and strongly denied by Fico himself (16:35, 16:59). In other news, The number of Russian and Ukrainian troops killed, wounded or gone missing in nearly four years of war could reach 2 million by this spring, according to a study contested by Moscow. The leaders of three Dutch political parties have agreed a new coalition deal, paving the way for a rare minority government in the Netherlands almost three months after elections that produced an upset victory for the centrist D66 party (14:34, 14:35). Hungarian prosecutors have brought charges against Budapest’s liberal mayor, Gergely Karácsony, over his role in arranging an LGBTQ+ rights rally, and are seeking to impose a fine without holding a trial. And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

The arts of war: can Europe’s artists embrace the idea of ‘armed pacifism’?

One reason why art – painting, literature, film, theatre, all of it – is so important to society is that it creates spaces that can tolerate difficult answers to difficult questions. This makes art the opposite of politics, where politicians are under constant pressure to give easy answers to difficult questions. I was thinking about this distinction this month while watching the European film awards, this continent’s answer to the Oscars, which has moved its annual ceremony to January this year as it seeks to position itself as a major tastemaker for grownup cinema. One of the most gratifying wins of the night was the best documentary prize for Fiume o Morte! by the Croatian director Igor Bezinović – an Act of Killing-style re-enactment of the 1919 conquest of the Adriatic city of what is now Rijeka by a rag-tag army assembled by the proto-fascist dandy-poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. It was precisely the kind of quirky cinematic gem that the European film awards should be there to champion: a film ignored by the main festivals, about an overlooked but relevant episode in history. In his acceptance speech, Bezinović thanked the non-professional actors he’d recruited in his home town of Rijeka. But since the awards ceremony was held in Berlin, he also drew attention to the fact that, last month, 55,000 students in 90 cities had taken to the streets to protest “against the militarisation of Germany and against conscription”. Bezinović said he hoped “that these protests will inspire students all over Europe”. These words were met with frenetic applause, which is understandable. Pacifism is at the core of modern European identity: we are a crowded-together collective of similar-but-different nation states, who have managed to not be at each other’s throats for an unprecedented period of time precisely because we extricated ourselves from intense militarisation. History has taught Europeans to be cautious not just of picking up guns but of being sucked into martial mindsets. They value peace prizes over war medals. The European film awards don’t celebrate stories of superheroes or military glories but tales about conflicted antiheroes, like the protagonists of Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. American-style board games work with luck and conflict, while “Eurogames” run on collaboration and teamwork. And in Germany, especially, the spectre of a military-industrial complex fanning political fascism is not imagined but a fairly recent historical reality. And yet “no to militarisation” still feels like an easy answer to a difficult question. It’s difficult because the pacifist consensus that western Europe has established since the time of the cold war has relied on American security guarantees and Russian fossil fuels – two trade-offs that have started to look increasingly unwise since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and, at the very least, since President Trump’s threats of aggression against Greenland this year. All the evidence suggests that calls for European rearmament are not driven by an out-of-control yearning for former military glories, but a gradual awakening to these realities – which is why this turn is happening slowly and often reluctantly, and why Germany’s new plans fall some way short of conscription, as our Berlin correspondent Kate Connolly explored in a podcast this week. It’s understandable to feel frustrated with political leaders of the past having manoeuvred Europe into this conundrum, or with those of today remaining in the “comfort zone of cowardice and inaction”, as Nathalie Tocci wrote. But we should also ask what role we have to play in this – the kind of people on the liberal left who enjoy thoughtful European arthouse cinema, or indeed those who make it. Does being more sympathetic to the military automatically take artists down the same route as D’Annunzio, who was a revered literary figure with socialist sympathies before he tipped over into ultra-nationalism? Or can there be a middle way for culture in times of war? When I asked Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer, about this, she pointed me to the Ukrainian photojournalist and film-maker Mstyslav Chernov’s Bafta-nominated documentary 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a film “which is not so much ‘pro-military’ but ‘pro-soldier’, deeply empathetic towards the men who are sacrificing their lives for inches of Ukrainian soil”. In an essay published last year, the former Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba argued that Europe does not have to abandon the idea of pacifism by arming itself to the teeth. Instead, to survive it might have to embrace the idea of being an “armed pacifist”. It’s the kind of paradoxical image you would usually expect from artists, not politicians. • To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.

Threat of US-Iran war escalates as Trump warns time running out for deal

The threat of a US-Iranian war may be looming closer after Donald Trump warned time was running out for Tehran and said a massive US armada was moving quickly towards the country “with great power, enthusiasm and purpose”. Writing on social media, the US president said the fleet headed by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was larger than the one sent to Venezuela before the removal of Nicolás Maduro earlier this month and was “prepared to rapidly fulfil its missions with speed and violence if necessary”. Trump said: “Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS – one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence! “As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t, and there was ‘Operation Midnight Hammer,’ a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again.” It is the starkest indication yet from Trump that he intends to mount some kind of military strike imminently if Iran refuses to negotiate a deal on the future of its nuclear programme. European diplomats had been expecting a crisis to develop over the weekend and detected signs of Israeli nervousness about the scale of possible Iranian reprisals. Trump’s public justifications for mounting an attack have shifted from three weeks ago, when he vowed to Iranian protesters that US help was on its way. Later he said he had held off from attacks after Iran agreed not to execute any of the protesters. There is speculation that Trump actually held back because he did not have sufficient military assets in the area, Gulf States urged restraint and Israel counselled it needed more time to prepare for likely missile reprisals from Iran. Ever since, the Gulf States along with Turkey have been speaking to both sides, trying to find common ground between Iran and the US, but Tehran has insisted it will not negotiate under duress, or with preconditions. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, speaking in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, said a deal with Iran ought to happen. He told CNBC: “Obviously, the deal has to do with missiles. It has to do with enrichment. It has to do with non-state actor proxies. It has to do with the material [Iran’s stockpile of nuclear material].” In recent days it has become clear that Trump is interested in curbing not just the remains of Iran’s already shattered nuclear programme but also its ability to fire long-range missiles, always seen as the centrepiece of Iranian military projection. In recent weeks Trump has also suggested the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, must leave the world stage, a demand Iran will reject. Some will see the sudden ramping up of the threat as a useful piece of distraction at a time when Trump is under domestic political pressure over the violence administered by homeland security officers in Minnesota. The Iranian mission at the UN in New York said: “The last time the US blundered into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it wasted $7tn, and over 7,000 American lives were lost. Iran stands ready for dialogue based on mutual respects and interests but if pushed it will defend itself and respond like never before.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said he was not prepared to negotiate under threats but he was willing to talk without preconditions, terms he had relayed via numerous intermediaries to Witkoff. In the last 24 hours, Araghchi or the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, have spoken to diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. All three Arab states will be feverishly exploring ways to reopen talks without Iran having to accept a preconditioned result. They were critical in persuading Trump to hold back from mounting an attack three weeks ago, but Trump now has greater flexibility of military options and seems more focused on a nuclear deal rather than punishing Iran for the bloody suppression of street protests. There is deep suspicion in Tehran about talking to the US since the two sides were in the middle of talks last June when Israel was given clearance by the US to mount an attack on Iran designed to decapitate its leadership and destroy its civil nuclear sites. Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, urged the US to detach its wider demands about Iran’s missile programme and support for militia in the region from the nuclear file. He said he thought that if Witkoff insisted on putting all items on to the table at once, Iran would not respond. Trump has been insisting that Iran abandon its domestic nuclear enrichment programme, permit UN nuclear inspectors to return and hand its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to a third party, most likely Russia. Iran has always held out against abandoning its domestic capacity to enrich uranium but has been willing to set rigid limits on its stockpile. Since the last round of negotiations ended with an Israeli and US attack killing 1,000 people and severely damaging its key nuclear sites, Iran has been weakened further by a plunging currency and rampant inflation. With the nuclear sites already damaged, the key targets are likely to be Iran’s leadership. June’s attack revealed Israel had near total dominance of the skies above Iran. Almost all the Gulf states, fearful of Iranian reprisals, have said they are not willing to allow the US to use their airspace or bases to mount an attack on Iran. Iranian officials said: “We will target the same base and the same point from which air operations against us are launched, and we will not attack countries because we do not consider them to be enemy countries. We will increase our level of defence readiness against the US military buildup to the highest level. If the Americans want negotiations without pre-determined outcomes, Iran will accept it.”

Imran Khan’s health in ‘grave danger’ after being diagnosed with serious eye condition in jail

Pakistan’s incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan is facing severe eye damage and is being denied proper access to medical treatment while in solitary confinement, officials from his political party say. Khan, 73, considered Pakistan’s most high-profile political prisoner, has been in jail since August 2023. He is serving sentences for corruption and leaking state secrets, which he has claimed are part of a state-sponsored campaign to keep him out of power. Khan has largely been kept in solitary confinement, according to his lawyers and party leaders, who said they have been denied access to him for the past three months. According to a statement by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Khan’s party, their fears for his health worsened after reports the former prime minister had been diagnosed with a dangerous blockage in the retinal vein in his right eye, known as a central retinal vein occlusion. If left untreated, the condition can cause permanent damage to eyesight. “According to medical experts who reportedly checked him in jail, this is an extremely sensitive and serious medical condition which, if not treated promptly and properly, carries a high risk of permanent damage to his eyesight,” the PTI said. Khan reportedly already has blurred vision because of the condition. The party said the prison authorities had not allowed his personal doctor to examine him for months, which they said was “reckless” and putting Khan’s health in “grave danger”. For the past three months, lawyers and senior party figures as well as Khan’s sisters, have been protesting over their lack of access to Khan in Adiala prison. Their demonstrations have been met with teargas and water cannon. A court order stated Khan should be allowed visits by family and lawyers twice a week. However, he last met his lawyers 100 days ago and a legal petition by his party leaders to get access to him in prison was rejected this week. Gohar Ali Khan, a barrister and PTI chair, said the party had significant concerns about Khan’s health and his conditions in prison. “Despite the court orders, we could not meet Khan,” he said. “He is incommunicado and in solitary confinement, which is against his fundamental rights. After the reports on Khan’s health, we and his physicians should be given immediate access.” After concerns over his condition late last year, Khan was allowed to briefly meet his sisters in early December, who reported that his health was fine. “Presently, we don’t know anything about the condition of his eye as we are not allowed to meet him,” said his sister Uzma Khanum, speaking on Wednesday as she took part in a sit-in outside the jail to demand access to her brother. Khan served as prime minister between 2018 and 2022 before he was toppled in a vote of no confidence after he fell out with the powerful military establishment. He was arrested in August 2023 on more than 100 charges he claimed were made up by the military and government in order to disqualify him from politics. Khan was first sentenced to three years for “selling state gifts”, and in January 2025 was sentenced to a further 14 years in prison on corruption charges. His wife, Bushra Bib, was sentenced to seven years in the same case and remains in jail.

Qatari plane hits Milan airport lights during arrival of Winter Olympics staff

A Qatari military cargo plane carrying security staff in Italy to assist with law enforcement for the Winter Olympics struck a lighting tower on Sunday as it manoeuvred upon landing at Milan’s Malpensa airport, it has emerged. The aircraft was carrying 104 personnel from the Gulf state’s elite security forces, plus huge jeeps and snowmobiles, as part of an agreement made with the Italian government, despite Qatar not competing in the games. The arrival of Qatar’s security force comes amid controversy over the involvement of a unit of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), one of the agencies embroiled in a brutal immigration crackdown in the US, in the security detail during the winter olympics, which begin on 6 February. A source at the Italian interior ministry said Qatar’s security force was involved “mainly in a training” capacity. “Qatar is a fundamental partner in the security plan and any negative interpretation of the agreement is unfounded,” the source added. The Italian government appears to be leaving no stone unturned when it comes to security during the Milano-Cortina Games, with the Qatari personnel and the agents from ICE joining a fleet of about 6,000 from various Italian police units. But although they made a prominent arrival in Milan, any controversy over the Qatari involvement has so far been mute, or perhaps overshadowed by ICE. The Qatari air force’s C-17 Globemaster II plane slightly hit the lighting tower after landing on Sunday while making “a wrong” manoeuvre during the “pushback” phase, Milano Today reported. A welcome ceremony involving Qatar’s ambassador in Italy and various Milan officials awaited the passengers as they disembarked. Escorted by Italian patrol vehicles, a convoy of SUVs and armoured vehicles bearing the inscription “State of Qatar – Lekhwiya” (Lekhwiya is the name of Qatar’s elite security force) then made its way through the centre of Milan, passing landmarks including the Duomo, and briefly stopping at San Siro, where the opening ceremony of the Games will be held. The group of Qatari security personnel is expected to be split between Milan and Cortina. Even though Qatar has no athletes competing at the event, the Qatari royal, Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, who was this week elected president of the Olympic Council of Asia, will be attending. Al Thani also leads the Qatar Olympic Committee. Qatar has steadily been building its influence in Olympic sports. The country is due to host the Asian Games in 2030 and hoping to win its bid for the 2036 summer Olympics. An anti-ICE protest, organised by various leftwing parties and unions, is planned in Milan on Saturday. Italy’s interior ministry has said the agency’s investigative unit will be involved in the security detail at the Games and not its immigration operation, whose crackdown in the US led to the fatal shootings this month of the US citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Italy’s far-right government is ideologically aligned with Donald Trump’s administration and the agents will reportedly act as “bodyguards” for the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who are expected to attend the event. Milan’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, said ICE agents would not be welcome in the city “because they don’t guarantee they’re aligned with our democratic security management methods”. The city’s leftwing councillors held signs reading “No ICE” during a debate on Monday.

China lags behind US at AI frontier but could quickly catch up, say experts

Standing on stage in the eastern China tech hub of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s normally media-shy CEO made an attention-grabbing announcement. “The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution,” Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. “Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI).” ASI, Wu said, “could produce a generation of ‘super scientists’ and ‘full-stack super engineers’”, who would “tackle unsolved scientific and engineering problems at unimaginable speeds”. Wu also announced plans to invest 380bn yuan (£40bn) in AI infrastructure over the next three years, news that sent Alibaba stocks soaring to their highest in nearly four years. Wu’s foray into the existential, techno-frontier rhetoric normally deployed by western tech CEOs such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman and DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis caught the attention of observers. “Wu’s ASI speech represents a breakthrough,” the tech writer Afra Wang wrote in her China AI newsletter, Concurrent. “Major Chinese companies are beginning to articulate their own grand visions that carry the flavour of future prophecy.” AGI, a theoretical state of AI where a highly autonomous system is able to do a human’s job, has become the preoccupation of American tech companies such as OpenAI and DeepMind. Many see it as the next frontier of civilisation, and are in competition with each other, and China, to get there. In May, the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, told a US Senate committee on AI that the “race between the United States and China for international influence likely will be won by the fastest first mover”. Many in Washington have internalised these fears. The US-China economic and scurity review commission has recommended that Congress “establish and fund a Manhattan Project-like program dedicated to racing to and acquiring an artificial general intelligence (AGI) capability”. The Manhattan Project was a second world war-era research operation to produce nuclear weapons. In China, many saw Wu’s speech as articulating the vision of a bold, singular tech company, but not one that represented China’s overall AI industry. “China certainly has research groups working towards AGI. But most AI companies are working towards better applications,” said Ya-Qin Zhang, the dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute for AI Industry Research and former president of the tech company Baidu. A combination of limited computing power, a pragmatic approach to technology and a keen awareness of the present day potential of AI has steered China’s national AI policy towards real-life applications rather than frontier research. In August, the Chinese government published its highly anticipated “AI+ strategy”. The policy document outlined how AI could turbocharge China’s development goals, such as by using AI to improve medical diagnoses and make supply chains more efficient. But it made no mention of AGI. “The Chinese government is intently focused on reaping the benefits of AI in the here and now and in the near future through diffusion and application of AI across the economy, society, defence, and other areas,” said Julian Gewirtz, a former senior director for China and Taiwan at the White House national security council. “Despite its goal to ‘catch up and surpass’ the United States, we shouldn’t assume that the Chinese Communist party has bought into the idea that AGI is imminent.” “If you’re just looking at what has been officially published … there is no clear acknowledgment of AGI at all,” said Selina Xu, a China tech analyst. Xu noted that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, had a history of preferring the physical economy to more intangible forces. “It’s a very different narrative from the AGI race as a lot of people in DC see it,” Xu said. One of the biggest factors guiding this strategy is the fact that US sanctions have prevented Chinese companies from acquiring the world’s most sophisticated semiconductors, which are needed for advanced AI research. Washington has banned the sale of hi-tech microchips to China in an effort to rein in the country’s AI development. Nvidia, the world’s leading chipmaker, then developed more basic semiconductors specifically for the Chinese market. In December, Washington approved the Nvidia’s second-most advanced chips, the H200s, for sale in China. But Beijing has reportedly told custom agents that the chips cannot be imported into China, as the government seeks to break the country’s reliance on overseas technology. China insists that “necessity is the mother of invention” and points to the success of companies such as DeepSeek as proof that the US restrictions will merely spur innovation. DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, is one of the few Chinese tech leaders who, like Alibaba’s Wu, has openly expressed an interest in AGI. But until China is able to produce its own advanced semiconductors at scale, most tech companies feel it is more profitable to use the hardware they already have to focus on AI applications rather than AGI. Another factor guiding the US-China tech competition is the availability of datacentres and the energy to power them. In November, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, said China would “win the AI race” in part because of its energy subsidies for datacentres. The subsidies were reportedly introduced after Chinese tech companies complained of higher electricity bills caused by the domestic semiconductors they are obliged to use, which are less efficient than Nvidia’s. In a sign of how determined China is to break its reliance on imported technology, Reuters reported that any datacentres in receipt of state funds could only use domestic chips. Such measures would reduce Nvidia’s competitive advantage in China and boost domestic chip producers, such as Huawei. Since 2021, China has reportedly poured $100bn into support for AI datacentres. But there are signs that the boom may have been overzealous. A recent report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology said that nationwide, the utilisation rate for AI datacentres was 32%. In a recent op-ed in China Economic Weekly, Rao Shaoyang, the director at the China Telecom Research Institute, wrote that in some regions of China, the computing power industry was operating in a similar fashion to China’s beleaguered property sector: build first, find buyers later. He cautioned against “blindly building intelligent computing centres” and said local computing power demand should be considered before building new datacentres. Despite the surplus in more general computing power, many experts believe China still does not have chips that are sophisticated enough to explore frontier research in AGI. But analysts note that the mood could change quickly. “The current status quo is highly fluid, and Xi Jinping has explicitly declared an ambition to lead the world in AI,” said Gewirtz. “So the fact that China construes that goal one way at this snapshot moment in time does not give me any comfort that in a year they’re going to construe it the same way.” Additional research by Lillian Yang

Dutch parties strike minority coalition deal three months after D66 election upset

The leaders of three Dutch political parties have agreed a new coalition deal, paving the way for a rare minority government in the Netherlands almost three months after elections that produced an upset victory for the centrist D66 party. The liberal-progressive, pro-European party, led by the probable new prime minister, Rob Jetten, will join up with the conservative Christian Democrats and the right-wing VVD in a government that holds only 66 seats in the 150-seat lower house. The new coalition shuts out the far-right Freedom party (PVV), led by the anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders, which D66 narrowly defeated in the tight October election. Both parties won 26 seats, although seven PVV MPs have since broken away. “We’re incredibly eager to get started,” said Jetten, 38, who will become the Netherlands’ youngest ever prime minister, announcing the accord on Tuesday night. “We’re going to do it as a three-party coalition, but we’d also like to work with other parties.” He added: “We now want to get started on all the major issues facing us – international security, domestic security, providing affordable homes, getting migration under control and investing in the new economy.” The government’s plans, due to be announced in detail on Friday, include “enormous investment” in defence and “in the Netherlands itself”, Jetten said. “We want to set out the finances carefully so that we do not pass debts on to future generations.” D66 surged to an upset win, spurred by what Jetten called its “positive message”, finishing just 30,000 votes ahead of the PVV, the largest member of the shortlived outgoing coalition until Wilders pulled out in a row over immigration. The new cabinet should now be formally sworn in by mid-February, but will have to work with opposition parties in the fragmented Dutch parliament to pass legislation. It also lacks a majority in the senate, which can block laws passed by the lower house. The three parties made the highly unusual choice to govern without a majority after the VVD leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz, refused from the outset to consider including the left-leaning GroenLinks/PvdA alliance, which won 20 seats, describing it as too radical. Similarly, efforts by the VVD to include the radical-right populist JA21 party ran into determined opposition from D66. “We do not consider that to be wise at this time, given everything that has to be done,” Jetten said earlier this month. However, the GroenLinks-PvdA leader, Jesse Klaver, said this month his party was open to negotiating agreements with the new coalition on a case-by-case basis, saying it wanted to provide what he called “responsible opposition”. Klaver said global instability and the need to “help move the Netherlands forward” meant the government could not afford to fail and his party would support it on big issues such as environmental reforms and accelerating housebuilding. It would draw the line, however, Klaver said, on any attempts to unfairly increase the tax burden on ordinary working people, reduce healthcare funding or relax employment legislation to make it easier to fire employees. GroenLinks-PvdA is now the largest opposition party in parliament – and could provide the government with a majority in both houses – after the breakup earlier this month of Wilders’ PVV, which lost almost a third of its seats in the election. The breakaway group, led by a long-serving PVV MP, Gidi Markuszower, attacked Wilders’ election strategy, saying “insulting Islam” was “OK” but “does not solve voters’ problems”, and his failure to enrol any members apart from himself. However, two other far-right parties, Forum voor Democratie (FvD) and JA21, both gained seats in the election and continue to advance in the polls. Wilders said after the split it was a “black day” but he had “every confidence” his party would survive it.