Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte met King Willem-Alexander today to discuss the formation of a caretaker government, a day after the collapse of the centre-right government, which resulted from a split of the ruling coalition parties over immigration policies.

Leaving the palace, Rutte refused to talk about the content of the conversation with the king, which lasted an hour and a half. “These are confidential meetings,” he told reporters.

The next major step will be the dissolution of parliament, but first there will be a government resignation debate in the Dutch lower house scheduled for Monday.

After the dissolution of parliament, elections will be held, expected in November.

Rutte, 56, in power since 2010, is the Netherlands’ longest-serving prime minister. Yesterday at a press conference he stressed that he would like to run for a fifth term, but will consult with his party before making a final decision.

The crisis in Dutch politics came after Rutte’s conservative VVD party sought to limit the flow of asylum seekers to the Netherlands.

Tensions peaked last week when Rutte called for support for a proposal to limit the number of arrivals of war refugee children already in the Netherlands and force families to wait at least two years before they can be reunited.

This proposal was opposed by the smaller partner of the four-party coalition, the Christian Union and the liberal D66, and as a result the government fell.

As head of state, the king is expected to ask Rutte’s ruling coalition to remain as a caretaker government until a new government is formed after the election, a process that in the Netherlands’ fragmented political landscape could take months.

Before meeting the king, Rutte tweeted that he had spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to clarify that his government’s official status would not affect Dutch support for Ukraine.

Since the migration crisis of 2015-2016, the issue of migration has caused tectonic rifts in the European political scene.

Support for Germany’s far-right AfD has grown over the past six months. In Spain, polls suggest the far-right Vox may enter a governing coalition after this month’s election.

In the Netherlands, migration is partly overshadowed by farmers’ protests against government plans to limit nitrogen emissions.

Farmers’ protest party BBB became the largest party in March’s provincial elections.

In the latest Ipsos poll, conducted a week before the government collapsed, Rutte’s VVD was projected to remain the largest party in the 150-seat parliament with 28 seats. But the BBB looks set to make a big surge, predicted to take 23 seats to 1, making it the second largest political force.

The BBB also supports a stricter immigration policy and has proposed a possible annual cap of 15,000 asylum seekers.

The Netherlands already has one of the harshest immigration policies in Europe. But asylum applications rose by a third last year to more than 46,000 and the government has predicted they could exceed 70,000 this year – a figure above the previous high of 2015.