NATO Ambassadors have approved Mark Rutte as the new Secretary General of the alliance, RBK reports.
Mark Rutte is 57 years old and he has led the Government of the Netherlands for four consecutive terms since October 2010.
Current NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is retiring in the fall. He became NATO Secretary General in 2014.
According to DW, at the beginning of July last year, Mark Rutte announced that he was leaving politics. And parliamentary elections were held in the Netherlands in November. The reason was that the right-wing liberal party (VVD), led by Rutte, considered his asylum policy too lenient. The ruling four-party coalition has disintegrated.
The far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders won the new campaign. Mark Rutte could not prevent public sentiment from shifting to the right.
«This was, perhaps, the biggest political defeat in his life. Rutte finally resigned as prime minister and since then, due to the complex process of forming a new government in the Netherlands, has remained acting prime minister,» DW notes.
The fact that Mark Rutte was seeking to take the post of NATO Secretary General became known in October 2023. As the European media emphasized, «Rutte obviously forgot about his intention to leave big politics.» For several months, he waged an inconspicuous campaign, communicating with the heads of state and government of the countries participating in the alliance. Being a convinced Atlanticist and an ardent supporter of Ukraine, a historian by training, he was able to achieve support first from the United States, and then from the vast majority of other NATO states.
Political analysts believe that as NATO secretary general, he will likely take a step back and become more restrained and diplomatic.
«After all, Mark Rutte’s main task will ultimately be to reconcile the conflicting interests of the 32 member countries of the alliance and enable NATO to act as a united front on the world stage,» DW says, adding that his predecessor, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, was a master in this matter.
