Favorite European liberal party

[mvd10]

VVD (Party for Freedom and Democracy). I mean, what did you expect ? The VVD is pretty conservative on law and order and immigration though, they're definitely the most conservative party out of this bunch. Most VVD voters probably would be voting for the Tories or other conservative parties over the more left-liberal parties in this list.

[mvd10]

VVD (Party for Freedom and Democracy). I mean, what did you expect ? The VVD is pretty conservative on law and order and immigration though, they're definitely the most conservative party out of this bunch. Most VVD voters probably would be voting for the Tories or other conservative parties over the more left-liberal parties in this list.

Just wondering, was I wrong to group it with the other liberal parties? I know it's more to the right than the others, but would you consider it to be liberal? I kind of assumed because it is a member of ALDE.

It's still a liberal party imo. I wouldn't really know how to call them otherwise. Secular conservative maybe (idk if that's a thing)? Conservative liberal probably describes them the best. They (we actually) still consider themselves liberal, and the VVD indeed is a member of ALDE (probably the most right-wing party in ALDE together with Venstre and some other conservative liberal parties though). The VVD has liberal views on things like euthanasia, abortion and LGBT rights and they're generally pro-European (it's common knowledge that Rutte is much more critical of the EU at home than at EU summits).

They still belong in this list, but they're the odd one out (I guess the FDP is fairly close to the VVD, even though the VVD is far to the right of them on civil liberties). But comparative politics is rather sketchy.

Why didn't you include liberal parties in Belgium and Denmark btw? As far as I know they're fairly close to the VVD (I'm not sure about Open VLD, but didn't they become more conservative under Rutten? I don't know much about Belgian politics which is pretty weird ).

[mvd10]

D66 are frauds lol
LibDems

Yeah, I forgot to mention that D66 frequently tried to outflank the VVD on economics the past couple of years. D66 called for extra austerity to pay for tax cuts lol. In the end D66's manifesto still was way to the left of the VVD's manifesto on economics (smaller tax cuts, no benefits freeze, etc), but D66 clearly leans to the right on economic issues now (even though their former leader Jan Terlouw said that neoliberalism is destroying us and was the Dutch Bernie for exactly a week after a boring speech on TV).

But are the other centrist liberal parties any different? LibDems have their Orange Book wing (RIP 2010-2015 ), LREM is trying to liberalize the French economy and the FDP probably is as right-wing as the VVD on economic issues. I don't know enough about Citizens and NEOS.