Belgium and The Netherlands
"Purple" (Dutch: Paars) is the nickname of a government coalition of social democrats and liberals together, excluding Christian democrats. It is derived from the combination of the colour of the social democrats (red) and liberals (blue).
Both the Netherlands and Belgium have had such governments. In the Netherlands the two cabinets of Prime Minister Wim Kok (Kok I and Kok II, 1994–2002) were composed of social democrats (the Labour Party, PvdA), conservative liberals (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, VVD) and progressive liberals (Democrats 66).
In the 2010 Dutch cabinet formation the possibilities for a Purple-plus cabinet (the original "purple" coalition of PvdA, VVD, D66 plus GreenLeft) was investigated.
In Belgian politics, the term is used as a term for the two federal governments of Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, from 1999 to the general elections of 2007. These cabinets consisted of the Flemish and Francophone social-democratic parties (SP.A and PS) and the Flemish and Francophone liberal parties (Flemish Liberals and Democrats and the Liberal Reformist Party, which later became Open VLD and the Reformist Movement). The first government also included the Flemish and Francophone green parties Agalev and Ecolo.
Read more about this topic: Purple (government)
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“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)