FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BRUSSELS – Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced yesterday that he will leave politics. The fall of its fourth government over disagreements between the coalition parties over how immigration should be managed will force the Netherlands to hold new elections in November. And Rutte, 56, leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, is not available for a fifth term: “In the last few days there has been speculation about what motivates me, and the only answer is: the Netherlands,” he said in parliament – . It is in this light that my position must be read. Yesterday morning (9 July, editor’s note) I decided that I would no longer be available to lead the Vvd list. “When a new government takes power, I will leave politics.” A decision that caused “mixed feelings” for him, but he admitted that “it was also a relief to pass the baton”.
The Prime Minister who cycles to work and lives in a modest apartment, the Dutchman next door who volunteers at a local school and is known for his toughness have an interest in the post of NATO Secretary General, who works in a Year becomes free excluded. As the longest-serving Dutch prime minister, he was also the veteran leader of the leaders who sit on the European Council, along with Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, both of whom have been in office since 2010. The scandals that beset his four governments have never weakened him. A resistance and stability – it was nicknamed the “Teflon Mark” – that Rutte liked to remind countries like Italy of. In January, he explained in an interview with Corriere that he had “worked with eight Italian governments” and that he had “always seen a coherent line on immigration at EU level”. On that occasion he underlined “the excellent collaboration” with Giorgia Meloni and “the very coherent way of thinking, which in a way makes it easy to negotiate with Rome”.
A harmony that led to the trip of the two Dutch and Italian Prime Ministers to Tunis last June with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. However, Italy is not only losing an ally in the migration issue, but also in the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact. Unlike Germany, Holland has proved more open to dialogue, and while it defends accounting rigor as usual – it remains a frugal country – it is no longer the battering ram in negotiations where Berlin now takes unyielding positions. And if you consider that in June-July 2020, during the negotiations to create Next Generation Eu, the largest EU bailout plan for the countries affected by Covid, introducing the common debt policy for the first time in the Union’s history, Rutte had even made life difficult for Angela Merkel, with whom he had always been an ally, at least until then. A relentlessness that has never faltered. He recently said no to the hypothesis of an EU sovereignty fund.