International

Last week the Prime Minister Mark Rutte presented the plans for the Dutch EU Presidency. To my request for him to show a little bit of vision, he dragged his old joke out of mothballs: anyone who doesn't have vision needs to visit the doctor. This is a superannuated gag from former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the intention of which he moreover repudiated himself later. The reason that even the Dutch media showed hardly any interest in Rutte's speech was precisely this lack of vision. Our Prime Minister can think in no terms other than market, market, market, and openly represents the interests of big corporations. That's gelled with the Brussels of the last thirty years, but with all of these crises this era is drawing to a close. Only a Europe in which the interests of ordinary people take centre stage will be capable of putting a stop to these crises. I'm afraid that Rutte still has to learn this lesson.

To the refugee crisis, Rutte has an easy answer. In the coming weeks we'll ensure that no more refugees enter Europe. He has complete faith in the Turkish government in this, although the Turks have already let it be known that they need more money than the three billion euros promised, but still after some time not handed over. Moreover, if we are to take human rights and the UN Refugee Treaty at all seriously, then asylum seekers who present themselves at the border cannot be sent back before their applications have been considered. In short, Rutte can in no way keep this promise, without abusing human rights and making himself dependent on a Turkish government which itself hardly bothers about human rights. Just ask the Kurds in Turkey, or the academics who had the courage to criticise Erdoğan, and have since been arrested.

Keeping the euro afloat by means of a tight budgetary policy is also going to be a problem. Now Spain has joined Greece and Portugal in electing a left government, and even the social democratic administrations of Italy and France have made it clear that they are being put through the mill by Brussels' diktats, we seem to be entering a real eurocrisis. What we're waiting for is the financial markets, which to date have been kept in check by the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, but which sooner or later will see that the eurozone is still just as unbalanced as it has been for the past few years. Southern Europe has been suffocated by austerity policies and needs to breathe air now. That can only happen if other eurozone countries are prepared to pay. As a budget fetishist, Rutte is going to find this a difficult assignment.

Without vision the Dutch Presidency is doomed to become the Presidency of the Uncontrollable Crises. With more market, Rutte won't escape from this. What he has to do is listen to what ordinary people in the member states want. In this, he's already far too late, however. But the presidency will last for another five months. Better to turn around halfway, than find oneself completely lost. To put this briefly: Rutte, can you still after all come up with a little but of vision?