Resignation of Prime Minister Mark Rutte: Dutch government collapses due to migration policy

Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s laughter does not stop. Cabinet crises, a vote of no confidence or disappointing elections: for the right-liberal these are all just challenges.

Laughing happily and biting an apple, that’s how many people know the 56-year-old. He sits on his bicycle and rides to the office, to the turret or turret, as his official residence in The Hague is called.

Rutte was Prime Minister of the Netherlands for almost 13 years, making him one of the longest-serving heads of government in the EU. But in his own country he is no longer untouchable after numerous affairs and most recently he was mainly accused by supporters of his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of having left the right-wing course of his party. His great opponent, the right-wing populist Geert Wilders, accuses him of giving in, especially when it comes to climate and asylum policy.

For a long time, many Dutch people saw Rutte as a good crisis manager, someone who kept the store together. “He sees himself as a problem solver, as a manager,” says his biographer Sheila Sitalsing.

This was especially the case in large national tests. The downing of passenger flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, which killed almost 200 Dutch people. According to many compatriots, he also did a good job during the Corona crisis. But there were other crises: thousands of parents were falsely accused of alimony fraud, had to pay thousands of euros and ended up in abject misery. Or in the spring of 2021 – Rutte wanted to get rid of an uncomfortable critic in the House of Representatives and had not told the House the truth about it. He narrowly survived a vote of no confidence.

For biographer Sitalsing, Rutte is the ‘Houdini of Dutch politics’ because, like the legendary escape artist, he elegantly frees himself from any crisis. Rutte survived everything without a scratch. The affairs slid off him like a fried egg from a teflon pan. Nothing seemed to stick to the “teflon mark” – as it was often called.

Everyone is responsible for themselves and not for the state – “The state is not a happy machine”, as Rutte puts it. According to this principle, under his leadership the welfare state was radically transformed into a “participation society”.

As little as possible, that is also his ideal for Europe. If you can already speak of ideals – because he does not like that: “Anyone who has visions should go to the ophthalmologist”, the Dutchman likes to say.

For him, European cooperation is a necessary evil, which should above all benefit trade. But otherwise the motto applies: “Europe should only do what the Member States cannot do alone.” When it comes to money, Rutte steps on the brakes. “Mr. No, they call him in Brussels.

But he had just scored in the Ukraine war as an advocate for Ukraine in the EU and NATO. Rutte vigorously campaigned for arms supplies to Ukraine – including fighter jets. Most recently, together with his Italian colleague Giorgia Meloni, he campaigned for a stricter EU asylum policy.

Rutte’s qualities, his charm, his pragmatism are also internationally recognized. So far they have been a sure recipe for success in the totally fragmented political landscape of the Netherlands. Rutte can be with almost anyone. With left, with right. But will he succeed again? The question is whether he wants to go back to the “turret” at all or whether The Hague is becoming too small for him.