Walter Hinteler wrote:Dutch Set for a Taste of Their Own Medicine
Yeh, that made our Finances Minister look really silly.
He was the leader of the (free-market) VVD party in the last elections, and he's obviously been trying to shore up a kind of semi-nationalist support for his party by "standing up", and most publicly and stridently so, against those irresponsible bullies in France and Germany, for whose above-agreed deficits
we might end up paying for in taxes - et cetera.
He's also been selling the tough budget cuts this government is imposing on social security, health costs etc by referring to those EU budget rules. Of course, his party considers cuts like that a good thing on itself, but that kind of ideological point is harder to sell to the political mainstream, so he's been using the EU rules as a fig leaf. That was another reason why he had to be so opposed to the French/German decision to claim a waiver on them - because Labour was immediately asking, well, if they can claim a waiver, why do we need to be so hellbent on keeping, even bettering the rules?