Europe sleepwalks into a new dawn of uncertainty

More than half-way through his third term as Dutch prime minister and still just 53, Mark Rutte is suddenly up there with Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki as one of the bad boys of the European Union. On Sunday, as the latest EU summit convened to approve a rescue package for the member states worst hit by the coronavirus descended into farce,  President Macron of France named and shamed Rutte as the fly in the EU’s ointment and, most damning of all, as the new David Cameron.

Rutte, as tough as he is affable, was unmoved, even when the Frenchman banged the table. He was not going to endorse a handout that his country, for one, could ill afford unless strings were attached binding the recipient countries – mainly Italy, Spain and the East Bloc, but also France – to close economic scrutiny and, in the case of Hungary and Poland, established democratic norms.

In addition, he was not prepared to approve the proposed €750 billion package, in which non-repayable grants are the central feature, without substantial downwards revision. Loans, he said, not grants, were the best way forward.

The summit, which today extends into its fourth tortuous session, has revealed the many fissures in the EU as it seeks to cope with the coronavirus while moving into a new era, built around reform on all fronts, without the UK and – ­ notably – without Britain’s substantial contribution to the community budget.

No-one knows who will best stick the pace and who will end up as the weakest link. But it was Rutte who emerged as the undisputed leader of the new awkward squad. Backed by his colleagues from Denmark, Sweden, Austria and, most recently, Finland, he was the one who led the charge, driving Macron to distraction and Angela Merkel – the once and present Queen of Europe – to the limits of her patience.

As dawn rose in Brussels this morning the Frugal Five, as they are now known, showed no signs of giving in.

The prospect was either that the summit would break up in disorder (a huge embarrassment for the European project) or whether some sort of fudge would be agreed – if “agreed” is the word – which would at least allow the exhausted leaders to take off their masks, real and metaphorical, and return home.

But what of the villain of the piece? Who is Mark Rutte, and where did he spring from? Well, the first thing to say about him is that there’s liberal and there’s Liberal. Rutte leads the Dutch Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which sounds Polish but is in fact longhand for Liberal, which, in the Netherlands as elsewhere on the Continent, means progressive on social issues and hard-line when it comes to the economy and national finances.

Unmarried and dedicate to his job, Rutte was posited as an ally of Cameron’s in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, with both men seen as Eurosceptics. But in the end the alliance fizzled out. When it came to the crunch, Rutte turned out to be an EU loyalist and backed off from supporting or sympathising with the British line.

But with the UK gone from the table, the calculations are different. Someone, Rutte reckoned, had to stand up for prudence against profligacy, and if it fell to him, so be it. Macron, predictably, went ballistic; the Italians and Spanish whined; the Frugalistas purred; the neutrals sat back in their seats waiting to see how the cards would fall.

Merkel, whose EU legacy moment this was supposed to be, did her best to remain calm and collected, supported by her fellow German, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Charles Michel, President of the European Council, both of whom spoke through teeth which, had they not been wearing masks, would definitely have been described as gritted.

The Polish and Hungarian delegations, meanwhile, were deep into insult territory, depicting Rutte as selfish, uncaring and all too ready to interfere in their God-given right to spend other people’s money in whatever way they chose.

Italy’s embattled Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was reported in the Dutch press to have told Rutte that because of his harsh attitude he might be a hero in his own country, but would ultimately be held responsible by all Europeans for blocking an adequate response to the corona crisis. More Italian than the Italians, Viktor Orban said he did not understand “why Rutte hates me and Hungary so much”.

To Rutte, apparently, the criticism was water off a duck’s back. “I really don’t care,” he told journalists this morning. “Hard language is part of negotiation. I fight for the interests of Dutch citizens, for a stronger Netherlands and a stronger Europe. I am not distracted by noises off.”

And so to round four, which begins at 4pm, giving the participants time to catch up on lost sleep. Nothing is guaranteed. Perhaps Macron will follow through on his threat to walk out. Perhaps Rutte will come up with a figure that the Frugal Five will back and the South and East can, at a pinch, accept. Or maybe the whole business will be referred back to yet another special summit, to be held, most obviously, in Berlin, reflecting the fact that Germany now holds the rotating EU presidency. The only thing that is certain is that nobody knows.