Former Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok dies at 80

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Wim Kok, a former Dutch prime minister who helped forge the country’s famed consensus-based politics and oversaw the pioneering legalisation of euthanasia and gay marriage, has died of heart failure at the age of 80.

Kok led two centrist coalitions between 1994 and 2002, overseeing a period of recovery and then of strong economic growth.

A labour union leader earlier in his career, he was one architect of the country’s famed “polder” or consensus-based model of politics, in which unions agreed to pay restraint in exchange for more jobs, while employers and the government guaranteed support and retraining after redundancies.

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