A new Dutch government took power on Monday, with 38-year-old centrist Jetten sworn in as the country’s youngest-ever prime minister and the first openly gay one.

Jetten pulled off a stunning election win in October, coming from behind to dethrone the far-right Freedom Party led by firebrand politician Geert Wilders by a razor-thin margin.

The snap election was called after the PVV withdrew from the previous coalition, the Netherlands’ most right-wing government in recent history, which lasted just 11 months.

Jetten’s D66 has teamed up with the centre-right CDA party and the liberal VVD to form a coalition, but will fall nine seats short of a parliamentary majority with only 66 seats.

The parties took 117 days to form their coalition — much less than the 223 days taken to form the previous government.

After his election victory, Jetten declared that it was possible to beat populist movements “if you campaign with a positive message for your country”.

On the campaign trail, Jetten said he wanted to “bring the Netherlands back to the heart of Europe because without European cooperation, we are nowhere”.

In a manifesto published in January, the three parties pledged full support for Ukraine and vowed to live up to the country’s NATO spending commitments.

Although the new government is not as far to the right as the previous one, it still has a “right-wing signature”, Sarah de Lange, a professor of politics at Leiden University, told AFP.

“The coalition has opted for budget cuts rather than running a deficit to finance any investments it wants to make” and there is “substantial continuity between the immigration plans of the new government and the previous one”, De Lange said.

The parties have pledged to press ahead with a crackdown on migration, including measures such as tougher rules on family reunification.