After the collapse of his government, the Dutch Prime Minister does not want to run again. As soon as the new cabinet is in place, he wants to leave politics, Mark Rutte announced on Monday.
After the government coalition in the Netherlands burst, Prime Minister Mark Rutte no longer wants to run for a fifth term. The longest-serving head of government in the country’s history announced on Monday that he would retire after the new elections in November.
The 56-year-old Rutte had previously stated that he would like to run again, but that would depend on his conservative VVD party. “In the past few days there has been a lot of speculation about what motivated me. The only answer is the Netherlands,” Rutte said in a speech in parliament before a debate on the collapse of the government. “Yesterday morning I made the decision that I will no longer be available as chairman of the VVD. As soon as the new cabinet is formed after the election, I will leave politics.”
Disputes about family reunification led to a break
Rutte’s center-right coalition of four parties broke up on Friday over family reunification for asylum seekers. Rutte’s party wanted families to wait at least two years to be reunited, which the coalition partners rejected. Read more about it here. They then largely blamed him for the government crisis over the weekend.
Rutte became Prime Minister in 2010 and is the longest-serving head of government in the European Union after Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
