RIJSWIJK, 24/01/03 - The reports on the Dutch election in foreign newspapers yesterday focused to a considerable extent on the defeat of the Pim Fortuyn List (LPF), particularly in the British dailies. "Dutch return to the old order" and "Fortuyn's party is crushed" were the headlines in The Daily Telegraph and The Independent.

The reporting in the Netherlands' neighboring countries was the most extensive and primarily businesslike. In Belgium, the Standaard called the result "impressive" for the Christian democrats (CDA), and commented that the LPF lost fewer seats than predicted. The paper observed that the Netherlands "had chosen the center again after the Fortuyn crisis. " In Germany, the Deutsche Welle claimed that the major trend in the Netherlands was 'new politics', to be personified by Labour (PvdA) leader Wouter Bos.

The Financial Times made the PvdA's revival the central theme of its report. The Netherlands has predominantly chosen the left, in the daily's view. The French newspaper Le Monde reported the "disintegration of the LPF" and the "electoral downfall of the populists".

The New York Times predicted that the election would lead to a calmer Dutch political climate. The paper called the Somali emancipation activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali one of the "victors" of the ballot, although her role in the campaign was actually fairly inconspicuous.