NATO | The countries of Eastern Europe were inclined to choose “Teflon Mark” – This is the future Secretary General of NATO

Holland’s prime minister Mark Rutten rise of the military alliance to NATO’s Secretary General was confirmed on Thursday, when the President of Romania Klaus Iohannis announced that he was withdrawing from the competition.

The countries of the alliance are now unanimous on Rutte’s choice Jens Stoltenberg successor.

Rutten is scheduled to begin his four-year term as NATO Secretary General on 1 October 2024. NATO tells on its website that the selection process for the Secretary General is the result of informal diplomatic negotiations, but requires the consensus of the member countries.

Rutten Hungary and Romania were in the way of selection in recent months.

Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán opposed Rutte on principle. Orbán did not want Rutte to use Hungarian money to support Ukraine.

According to Orbán, Rutte had made statements in 2021, due to which he could not support Rutte as general secretary. He did not specify what the statements were about.

Romania, on the other hand, would have liked to see the new Secretary General of NATO emerge from the eastern edge of the alliance. So far, the Secretary General has come from Western or Northern Europe.

However, the United States, France and Germany feared that the election of an Eastern European politician as Secretary General would have been seen as an escalation in Russia.

There is also one on the eastern edge of the alliance criticized Holland’s low investment in defense.

At the beginning of Rutte’s term as prime minister in 2011, the Netherlands made significant cuts to its defense budget. Ten years after the occupation of Crimea, the Netherlands is not even now reached the coalition’s recommended defense budget, which would be two percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Rotten is the longest serving prime minister in Dutch history and a politician with an exceptionally clean image considering the length of his career.

Thirteenth year as prime minister would make anyone cringe, but Rutte has enjoyed the trust of the Dutch throughout his career. The public image of the future Secretary General has been so stable that he has received in Holland too much name “Teflon Mark”.

Rutte has been said to be a clever politician who is able to build alliances with anyone. The core of his politics has been described “softly flexible Euroscepticism.”

Some of the critics of the future Secretary General are stated that he is more interested in power than in principles.

To the Dutch has appealed to Rutte’s nationality.

He cycles to work and drives a 1999 Saab car.

Rutte’s outspokenness has been considered in keeping with the Dutch folk character. In 2018 Rutte stated to the then President of the United States For Donald Trump in front of the media, that there would be “nothing positive” in the collapse of trade negotiations between the EU and the United States.

Columnist for NRC Handelsblad Tom-Jan Meeus succinctly summed up Rute’s public image For The New York Times.

“Court-free and traditional Dutch”.

In the summer of 2020, Rutte was called “Europe’s Mr. no, no no” in the Finnish press.

Rutte was the leader of the so-called coalition of nukes in the EU’s recovery financing negotiations. Helsingin sanomat newspaper told at that time, the “stubbornness of the negotiations” to be arranged for Rutte.

Teflon prime minister there are still scandals from the past.

In 2021, Rutte’s government resigned in the middle of the term. The reason was a scandal related to child benefits, in which 20,000 Dutch families were accused of abusing benefits without justification. Some of the families were ordered to pay tens of thousands of euros back to the state, without them having the opportunity to rectify the situation.

In connection with the scandal, the Dutch tax office admitted that 11,000 people were subject to a more specific reason just because they had dual citizenship. Many representatives of minorities saw this as proof that discrimination in the Netherlands is structural and accepted by those in power.

The situation was not helped by the fact that Rutte was there accused about ethnic profiling already in 2003.

Critics of the government saw resignation as a cynical survival solution.

Rutte has also been accused twice of ambiguities related to the deletion of text messages. Dutch law obliges politicians to save all their correspondence.