By Matt Steinglass
and Peter Spiegel
No one expected
the new Dutch finance minister to be a source of excitement. “Boring and
responsible” was the prescription offered by one senior Labour party MP during
coalition negotiations late last year – and he was the person who ended up
getting the job: Jeroen Dijsselbloem.
The reality has
been somewhat different. Five months on Mr Dijsselbloem has ignored his job description in some
style. With a few ill-considered comments about who should take losses when
banks fail, the man who also heads the eurogroup – the political body of
Europe’s single currency – killed his reputation for being boring.
His remarks
signalled a sea change. Whereas earlier in the eurozone
crisis it was largely government money that paid for rescues in countries
such as Ireland and Spain, the approach in the latest trouble-spot – Cyprus – was a sign
of things to come, Mr Dijsselbloem said. Now private investors, including
senior bond holders and even uninsured depositors, would foot the bill in what
would be the new norm in eurozone crisis management. “Now that the crisis seems
to fade out,” he argued, “I think we have to dare a little more in dealing with
this.”
His words spooked
markets. But for those who had watched his career, such bluntness is no
surprise. The former agricultural economist with tight-pressed lips and a
sharp, forbidding manner – he once received a text message from his party
leader ordering him to smile more in interviews – has always been most
comfortable playing the stern reformer.
“The Dutch have a
long reputation for being blunt and open, and Dijsselbloem is a classic
example,” says Boris van der Ham, a former MP from the D66 party. “With him in
Brussels, it’s a bit of a culture clash, as if you have a room full of people
drinking wine and suddenly here comes somebody who drinks milk.”
Mr Dijsselbloem’s
steadfast manner was nurtured in Eindhoven, an industrial city in the southern
Netherlands where he was born 47 years ago to an apolitical teacher couple. His
interest in politics began in 1983, spurred by the mass protests against US
cruise missiles that drew hundreds of thousands of Dutch youth into leftwing
movements.
After his studies
at the university of Wageningen, a small town in the central Netherlands where
he still lives with his partner and their two teenage children, he had a series
of jobs in agricultural policy before moving into politics.
His first term in
parliament in 2000 was unremarkable, but he started to show an unorthodox
streak in his second term, when he joined the so-called “red engineers”
campaign. Along with two other MPs, including Diederik Samsom, now Labour’s leader, he donned scarlet overalls to criticise their party
for having lost touch with its base.
He later led a
parliamentary commission that issued a report blasting educational reforms,
mostly designed by Labour governments. “He didn’t try to soften the report at
all,” said Mr van der Ham, who worked on the report. “He prefers to rip off the
bandage all at once.”
Gradually, he also
revealed himself as a bit of an old-fashioned moralist, calling for stricter
assimilation measures, and launching a crusade against nudity and violence in
video games.
His move to higher
political office was thanks in part to his old “red engineer” friend Mr Samsom
who, in coalition talks with the Liberal prime minister, Mark Rutte, made it clear he wanted
his lieutenant to be the new finance minister.
From the start, Mr
Dijsselbloem emphasised his commitment to fiscal discipline – again cutting
against the grain of expectations for a social democrat. This helped earn the
trust of Germany, the Netherlands’ ally in eurozone politics, which became a
key consideration when Jean-Claude Juncker’s term as eurogroup president
expired last year.
Although some
finance ministers from bailout countries were judged technically capable, they
were excluded from the start. The German and French ministers cancelled each
other out, leaving Mr Dijsselbloem as the surprise default choice.
He has not had an
easy start. French officials resisted his selection until the last moment. The
Spanish abstained, a potentially ominous sign of a rift between north and
south. Mr Dijsselbloem deflects talk of such a division by highlighting his own
country’s failings: while Spain battles a mountain of housing debt, so does the
Netherlands; just as Lisbon is struggling to hit deficit targets, so is The
Hague.
“I’m pretty new at
this eurogroup thing. When I came to it, I thought it was all about north and
south: the north were doing OK, the south was in trouble, and the north was
more or less imposing the measures and the programmes on the south,” he admits.
But in the crucial
Cyprus talks, he insists Madrid, Lisbon, Rome and particularly Paris were all
agreed on the need to shrink the banking system. “The north-south thing is
really a superficial analysis,” he said.
Still, Mr Dijsselbloem’s
lack of diplomatic tact has left some commentators unexpectedly nostalgic for
the politically adept Mr Juncker. However, senior officials who have worked
with both insist that not all the comparisons are favourable to Mr Juncker. Mr
Dijsselbloem is said to run a tight ship, pushing through agenda items and
forging consensus in ways the occasionally desultory Mr Juncker often did not.
And while Mr Juncker was the subject of thinly veiled contempt in Paris and
Berlin, Mr Dijsselbloem has quickly earned trust in both capitals.
It is that support
in Berlin – the first and most important capital to back him for the eurogroup
job – that makes his position secure whatever controversy he has courted.
Foisting the burden of bailouts on private investors has been a priority for
Berlin since the first Greek
rescue, in May 2010, only to be blocked by Paris and the European Central Bank. In Mr Dijsselbloem, they now have a
kindred spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment