Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte held out against his European Union counterparts on Saturday as negotiations on a massive stimulus fund ran into a second day and officials predicted a rough road ahead.
FILE PHOTO: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte arrives for the first face-to-face EU summit since the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Brussels, Belgium July 17, 2020. Francisco Seco/Pool via REUTERS
Conceding that the atmosphere at the summit in Brussels had soured on Friday over a late evening dinner after 13 hours of talks reached a deadlock, Rutte told reporters on Saturday: “This will probably take a while.”“It is getting a bit lonelier, I’m afraid,” he said of Dutch insistence that any money paid out from the recovery fund first be vetted by The Hague.
Many of the 27 leaders - wearing masks in their first face-to-face meeting since February - had their own demands in a complex negotiation crisscrossing different regional and economic priorities. The exact size of the 2021-27, 1 trillion euro budget and how far to use payouts as leverage for reforms, or whether to withhold money over rule of law issues in eastern Europe, were still to be resolved.
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