Stuck in a Rutte

Pieter Cleppe has a very interesting Critic piece on Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and the difficulties faced by his government within the obstructive constraints of the EU.


Stuck in a Rutte

An assessment of Dutch politics under Prime Minister Mark Rutte

In the run-up to the Dutch elections on 22 November, it is worth taking stock of the achievements of the man who has dominated Dutch politics for 13 years: Mark Rutte.

Rutte became Dutch prime minister for the first time in 2010. Throughout his four terms in office, he has shown himself to be a true political chameleon. He was not shy to depend on seats of the right-wing populist Geert Wilders in his first cabinet — or to make major concessions to the increasingly left-green party D66 in his third and fourth cabinet.

Economically, the Netherlands has experienced moderate growth under Rutte, which also has to do with the fact that the tax burden has invariably increased — something a liberal politician can hardly be proud of. The COVID-19 crisis, where Rutte went along with the failed lockdown model, can only partly excuse this.


The whole piece is well worth reading, because it brings home how much the EU deliberately interferes with the smooth running of national governments, something David Cameron always forgot to mention. For example, as Cleppe explains in the article, the “Corona Recovery Fund” is destined to be yet another headache for EU members.


During the COVID crisis, he gave up his opposition to the so-called “Corona Recovery Fund”.

The latter could prove to be the biggest blemish on Rutte’s record within a few years. The European Court of Auditors is now critical of the audit of the recovery fund, including “a lack of accountability” for the spending of EU citizens’ money. This should come as no surprise, given the warnings that were voiced when it was created. The biggest problem, however, is that the fund risks becoming permanent.

This fund provides €800bn in loans and grants to EU member states. The difference from most other European spending is that this so-called “Recovery and Resilience Facility” (RRF) is not financed by remittances from EU member states. On the contrary, it has been financed by common debt issuance by the European Commission — something that was the subject of legal doubts that, of course, ultimately proved no obstacle to going ahead with it nonetheless.

Within several years these debts will have to be repaid by the European Commission to the creditors who bought these de facto “eurobonds”, and so far it has not been decided how member states will pay for this. It is written in the stars that the increasingly cash-strapped member states will want to avoid a simple transfer to the Commission, and they may not be keen on allowing the European Commission to directly charge European citizens to collect the money. That leaves only one option: taking out a new loan to repay the old one, which is already standard practice for national governments.

Essentially, this means that the Corona Recovery Fund will become a permanent fund. Avoiding such a thing was Rutte’s condition in 2020 for accepting this fund, which was desired by Angela Merkel.