“It took a very long time... but it’s an honour," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said about his assurance of becoming NATO's next secretary general.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said he's honoured to have all but secured the role
00:05of NATO's next Secretary General.
00:09On Thursday, Romania's President Klaus Johannes withdrew from the race for the military's
00:14alliance top job, leaving Rutte the only remaining candidate.
00:19The Dutch Prime Minister's appointment could be sealed by a meeting of NATO ambassadors
00:24in the coming days, or when President Joe Biden and his NATO counterparts meet for a
00:30summit in Washington in July.
00:33Following the announcement of Johannes' withdrawal, Rutte posed in jeans, a white shirt and sunglasses
00:40for selfies with people outside his office.
00:44Speaking to the press, Rutte explained why he went for the job.
00:47Mark Rutte has faced a number of scandals while in office in the Netherlands.
01:10His third coalition government resigned in early 2021 over a scandal involving investigations
01:17into child welfare payments that wrongly labelled thousands of parents as fraudsters.
01:25But just a few months later, Rutte bounced back, leading his Conservative People's Party
01:30for Freedom and Democracy to victory in national elections.