[hyperman1]

I understood the money is divided up corresponding to the number of votes: If you get 10% of the votes, you get 10% of the money.

There is a 'kiesdrempel' declaring you need 5% of a district's votes before you can function as a party. There are I think 11 districts, so the theoretical maximum is (100/5)*11=220 political parties.

New parties create a document, the 'voordrachtsacte' which needs a minimal number of signatures. When you get enough people to sign it (again apercentage of the inhabitants of the region that's holding an election), you have managed to start a new party.

In practice there are about 3-5 big ones for each half of the country, plus a lot of small parties which are mostly ignored as background noise and are mostly dead at the next election.

Some background noise parties I remember because of their humoristic values were WOW (Gething older with grace), and BANAAN (banana, who had a slogan like: dont be a pear, vote banana)