Jeroen Dijsselbloem

Jeroen René Victor Anton Dijsselbloem (Dutch: [jəˈrun rəˈneː ˈvɪktɔr ˈɑntɔn ˈdɛi̯səlblum]; born 29 March 1966) is a Dutch politician and economist serving as Chairman of the Dutch Safety Board since 1 May 2019. A member of the Labour Party (PvdA), he has also been Chairman of the supervisory board of Wageningen University since 1 April 2019.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem
Chairman of the Dutch Safety Board
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 May 2019
Preceded by	Tjibbe Joustra
President of the Eurogroup
In office 21 January 2013 – 12 January 2018
Preceded by	Jean-Claude Juncker
Succeeded by	Mário Centeno
Minister of Finance
In office 5 November 2012 – 26 October 2017
Prime Minister	Mark Rutte
Preceded by	Jan Kees de Jager
Succeeded by	Wopke Hoekstra
Leader of the Labour Party in the House of Representatives
In office 20 February 2012 – 20 March 2012
Preceded by	Job Cohen
Succeeded by	Diederik Samsom
Member of the House of Representatives
In office 23 March 2017 – 25 October 2017
In office 20 November 2002 – 5 November 2012
In office 28 March 2000 – 23 May 2002
Personal details
Born	Jeroen René Victor Anton Dijsselbloem 29 March 1966 Eindhoven, Netherlands
Political party	Labour Party
Domestic partner	Gerda Grave (1992–present)
Children	1 son 1 daughter
Education	Wageningen University (MSc) University College Cork

Dijsselbloem was Minister of Finance in the Second Rutte cabinet, serving from 5 November 2012 to 26 October 2017. He also served as President of the Eurogroup from 21 January 2013 to 12 January 2018 and President of the Board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) from 11 February 2013 until 12 January 2018.

Early life and education

Jeroen René Victor Anton Dijsselbloem was born on 29 March 1966 in Eindhoven, Netherlands. His parents were both schoolteachers. He was raised as a Roman Catholic.[1]

Dijsselbloem went to a Roman Catholic primary school in Son en Breugel and the Catholic secondary school Eckartcollege (1978–85) in Eindhoven.[1] He studied at the Wageningen University between 1985 and 1991, where he obtained an engineer's degree ("ingenieur") in agricultural economics in 1991, majoring in business economics, agricultural policy, and social and economic history.[2][1]

Dijsselbloem subsequently did research in business economics at the University College Cork (1991) in Ireland,[1] but he did not graduate from this university.[3][4]

Political career

Dijsselbloem’s interest in politics began in 1983, spurred by the mass protests against U.S. Pershing cruise missiles that drew hundreds of thousands of Dutch youth into leftwing movements.[5] In 1985, he became a member of the Labour Party (PvdA).[1]

From 1993 to 1996 he worked for the parliamentary group of the Labour Party. From 1994-96 he was a member of the municipal council of Wageningen. From 1996 to 2000 he worked at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Fishery under Minister Jozias van Aartsen and State secretary Geke Faber.[1]

From 2000 to 2012, Dijsselbloem was elected to the House of Representatives for the Labour Party, with a brief interruption after the 2002 general elections where the Labour Party suffered a major defeat. He reentered the lower house in November that year due to Peter Rehwinkel's resignation. In 2007, he led a parliamentary inquiry on education reform. He focused on matters of youth care, special education and teachers. Following the resignation of Job Cohen as party leader and parliamentary leader of the Labour Party in the House of Representatives on 20 February 2012, he became the interim parliamentary leader, serving until 20 March 2012 when Diederik Samsom was elected as the next party leader of the Labour Party.

Minister of Finance (2012–2017)

Jeroen Dijsselbloem on Prinsjesdag in 2014

On 15 November 2012, Dijsselbloem was appointed by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands to serve as Minister of Finance in the Second Rutte cabinet.[6][7] From the start, Dijsselbloem emphasised his commitment to fiscal discipline.[5]

On 1 February 2013, he nationalized the financial institution SNS Reaal, preventing its bankruptcy.[8] Shareholders and owners of subordinated debt are expropriated with no compensation and others banks of the country have to contribute to the takeover up to one billion euros.[9] By December 2013, Dutch press named Dijsselbloem politician of the year, describing him as "intelligent, balanced and good at finding compromises". In a response, he said that he was surprised about winning the prize because he "does not work on the forefront".[10]

In the Netherlands, he was later named as a possible European Commissioner following the 2014 European elections; the post instead went to Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans.[11]

He was succeeded as Minister of Finance by Wopke Hoekstra (Christian Democratic Appeal) on 26 October 2017. He resigned from the House of Representatives the day before, while having been reelected during the 2017 Dutch general election in March; William Moorlag entered the States General to fill the vacancy.

President of the Eurogroup (2013–2018)

Dijsselbloem in 2017

Benoît Cœuré and Pierre Moscovici alongside Jeroen Dijsselbloem in 2017

On 21 January 2013, Dijsselbloem took office as President of the Eurogroup, a grouping of the Ministers of Finance of the Eurozone, those member states of the European Union (EU) which have adopted the euro as their official currency;[12][13] he succeeded Jean-Claude Juncker. Spain was the only country not to back his candidacy.

Dijsselbloem struggled early in his two and a half-year term and faced criticism for his handling of the "Cyprus bail-in."[14] In March 2013, he took the lead in the negotiation, conclusion and subsequent public promotion of the bailout. He attracted criticism for the precedent of taking depositors' balances as part of bank rescues but said "I am pretty confident that the markets will see this as a sensible, very concentrated and direct approach instead of a more general approach... It will force all financial institutions, as well as investors, to think about the risks they are taking on because they will now have to realise that it may also hurt them."[15]

On 24 March 2013, the Financial Times and Reuters reported that Dijsselbloem saw the Cyprus bail-in as a template for resolution of a bankruptcy.[16] However, it was the interviewer that had used the word "template" and not Dijsselbloem himself.[17] On 26 March 2013, Dijsselbloem said explicitly that he did not consider the Cyprus case to be a template.[18]

As Eurogroup head, Dijsselbloem later represented European creditors in negotiations with Greece over its bailout packages following Syriza's victory in the January 2015 legislative election.[19] Initially the Greek government formed by Syriza and the Independent Greeks pursued bilateral talks with creditors[20] and later the Eurogroup agreed on an extension of the bailout for four months.[21] The negotiations for a new bailout package failed to meet the deadline for a €1.1 billion repayment to the IMF on midnight 1 July 2015 (Athens time).[22] After the 5 July Greek referendum in which the then outstanding bailout offer from the Eurogroup was rejected by 61% of voters,[23] a crisis summit was held on 12 July to negotiate Greece's new bailout request.[24] Ahead of the summit, Dijsselbloem questioned whether the Greek proposals were credible.[25]

A deal for a new bailout package between the parties was finally agreed on Monday 13 July.[26] During the debate on the third bailout agreement in the House of Representatives of the Netherlands on 15 July, Dijsselbloem criticised the Syriza government as ideologues, saying that their "every sentence had ideological baggage".[27] He also received criticism for subterfuge in return from Greece's chief negotiator, the Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis, who published this account in his book Adults in the Room: "From my first Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem began an intensive campaign to bypass me altogether. He would phone Alexis Tsipras, my prime minister, directly – even visiting him in his hotel room in Brussels. By hinting at a softer stance if Tsipras agreed to spare him from having to deal with me, Dijsselbloem succeeded in weakening my position in the Eurogroup – to the detriment, primarily, of Tsipras".[28]

In August 2014, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her backing to Spain's Economy Minister, Luis de Guindos, in his bid to succeed Dijsselbloem as head of the Eurogroup from 2015;[29] De Guindos is a member of the same center-right political European People’s Party political bloc. Meanwhile, on 5 June 2015, Dijsselbloem announced he would seek a second term, prompting de Guindos saying he would mount a challenge.[30] In a subsequent letter requesting that he be reappointed to serve another two-and-a-half years as Eurogroup chair, Dijsselbloem pledged that he would push for eurozone-wide social and fiscal reforms designed to promote the smooth functioning of the currency union.[31] Once he picked up 10 votes at a Eurogroup meeting in July 2015, the remaining countries decided to vote unanimously for a second term.[32]

In June 2015, Dijsselbloem, alongside Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Juncker at the European Commission and Donald Tusk at the European Council, issued the so-called "Five Presidents' Report" on the future of the European Monetary Union, including proposals that mostly echoed calls by Germany and other northern eurozone countries to enforce spending rules across the eurozone.[33] On 4 December 2017, Mário Centeno was elected as his successor as President of the Eurogroup.

Following the resignation of Christine Lagarde as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2019, Dijsselbloem and Kristalina Georgieva were the final candidates considered by European governments as potential successors; Dijsselbloem was supported by a group of countries led by the Netherlands and Germany. Georgieva eventually got the backing of 56% of EU states which however represented only 57% of the bloc’s population, falling short of one requirement. However, Dijsselbloem conceded defeat.[34]

Interview controversy

In March 2017, he told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "As a Social Democrat, I attribute exceptional importance to solidarity. But those who call for it also have duties. I cannot spend all my money on drinks and women and then hold my hand up for help. That principle applies on a personal, local, national and also on a European level" while referring to Southern European countries affected by the European debt crisis.[35] This statement led to strong reactions by many European figures, as Gianni Pittella, head of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament (to which Dijsselbloem's party belongs) said "there is no excuse or reason for using such language, especially from someone who is supposed to be a progressive".[36]

Manfred Weber, leader of the European People's Party Group, tweeted "Eurozone is about responsibility, solidarity but also respect. No room for stereotypes".[37] The Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, said his words were "racist, xenophobic and sexist" and that "Europe will only be credible as a common project on the day when Mr. Dijsselbloem stops being Head of the Eurogroup and apologises clearly to all the countries and peoples that were profoundly offended by his remarks".[38] Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi also called on Dijsselbloem to quit, saying that "if he wants to offend Italy, he should do it in a sports bar back home, not in his institutional role".[39]

In response, Dijsselbloem said: "Everyone knows that I did not say that all southern Europeans spend their money on drinks and women. That is not what was in the interview and it was not my message. The anger about the interview is anger about eight years of policies to deal with the crisis. [...] I would have rephrased it otherwise probably. But it was my way of making clear that solidarity is not charity. It is not for nothing that the aid programs of the European emergency fund are accompanied by strict conditions: You get very cheap loans provided you take action to restore order. That is an important principle. For the ones who keep zooming in on those two words my message might be inconvenient. [...] It will not end well with the Eurozone if we keep breaking our previous agreements. [...] My choice of words was not right, I am sorry if you took offense, but I am still behind the message."[40][41]

Other activities

International organizations

• Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), ex officio member of the Board of Governors (2016–2017)[42]
• European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), ex officio member of the Board of Governors (2012–2017)[43]
• European Investment Bank (EIB), ex officio member of the Board of Governors (2012–2017)[44]
• Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), World Bank Group, ex officio member of the Board of Governors (2012–2017)[45]
• World Bank, ex officio member of the Board of Governors (2012–2017)[46]

Non-profit organizations

• World Economic Forum (WEF), Member of the Europe Policy Group (since 2017)[47]

Personal life

Dijsselbloem and his partner live together in Wageningen.[1] They have a son and a daughter.[1][48]

References

1. Ir. J.R.V.A. (Jeroen) Dijsselbloem, parlement.com; retrieved 3 February 2013.(in Dutch)
2. "Jeroen Dijsselbloem, President of the Eurogroup" Archived 19 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine, eurozone.europa.eu; retrieved 4 April 2013.
3. (in Greek) Οι ...μέθοδοι χρηματοδότησης Ιρλανδικών γαλακτοκομείων του κ. Ντάισελμπλουμ, Kathimerini, 31 March 2013; retrieved 1 April 2013.
4. "Dutch Finance Minister amends Cork University degree error", Irish Independent, 14 April 2013; retrieved 1 February 2015.
5. Matt Steinglass and Peter Spiegel, "Jeroen Dijsselbloem, eurozone reformer", Financial Times, 2013.
6. (in Dutch) "'Alle ministers zijn nu bekend'", NOS.nl; accessed 28 August 2017.(in Dutch)
7. "Rutte II: 'alle namen van het nieuwe kabinet'", RTL.nl; accessed 28 August 2017.(in Dutch)
8. David Jolly & Jack Ewing, "Dutch Government Takes Control of SNS Reaal", The New York Times; retrieved 3 February 2013.
9. "Les Pays-Bas nationalisent la quatrième banque du pays". lexpress.fr (in French). Retrieved 31 May 2017.
10. Anouk van Kampen, ""Dijsselbloem verkozen tot politicus van het jaar", NRC Handelsblad, 15 December 2013. (in Dutch)
11. Marc Peeperkorn, ""Hoe Juncker wraak nam op Dijsselbloem na opmerking over drankgebruik", Volkskrant.nl; accessed 28 August 2017.(in Dutch)
12. Juncker hints Dijsselbloem will replace him as Eurogroup chief Archived 14 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Europolitics.info, 10 January 2013.
13. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, a tough chairman for the Eurogroup, Presseurop.eu, 21 January 2013
14. Robin Emmott, "Spain to bid for euro zone chair in challenge to Dijsselbloem", Reuters, 2015.
15. Murphy, Paul, "Dijsselbloem, do remember that careless talk costs lives ...", ftalphaville.ft.com, 25 March 2013. The footnote to the headline read "*See classic Fougasse cartoons for an illustration of this point"; the ellipsis in the headline was completed with "... and it’s really about time it cost you your job.**"; and the second footnote read "**Though it’s unlikely that he’s going to lose it, so long as he has Germany’s support." The post was "[p]art of the A Cypriot Precedent series"; retrieved 25 March 2013.
16. Cyprus bail-out: savers will be raided to save euro in future crises, says eurozone chief, The Telegraph. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
17. "Dijsselbloem en de blauwdruk/template", Mrwonkish.nl; retrieved 13 September 2015.
18. "Cyprus Program Isn't Template for Euro-Area Rescues, EU Says", Bloomberg; retrieved 3 March 2014.
19. Toby Sterling, "Eurogroup President Dijsselbloem still seeking re-election", Reuters, 9 July 2015.
20. The Guardian, "Greece's Yanis Varoufakis begins European talks in France", 1 February 2015; retrieved 12 October 2015.
21. Suzanne Lynch, "Greece, Eurogroup agree to four month bailout extension", Irish Times, 20 February 2015; retrieved 12 October 2015.
22. "Greece debt crisis: IMF payment missed as bailout expires", bbc.com, 1 July 2015; retrieved 12 October 2015.
23. "Greece debt crisis: Greek voters reject bailout offer", bbc.com, 6 July 2015; retrieved 12 October 2015.
24. Steinhauser, Gabriele; Fairless, Tom (8 July 2015). "Greece Requests Three-Year Bailout in First Step Toward Meeting Creditors' Demand". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
25. Andreas Rinke and Francesco Guarascio, "Greece's bailout plan might not be good enough for a deal", Business Insider, 12 July 2015; retrieved 12 October 2015.
26. BBC News, "Greece debt crisis: Eurozone summit strikes deal", 13 July 2015. Retrieved 12 October 2015.
27. Merijn Oudenampsen, "Dit zijn de verzwegen dogma's van Jeroen Dijsselbloem, pragmaticus pur sang", 21 July 2015; retrieved 12 October 2015.(in Dutch)
28. Varoufakis, Yanis (3 May 2017). "The six Brexit traps that will defeat Theresa May | Yanis Varoufakis". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
29. "Merkel backs Spain economy minister to lead Eurogroup", RTÉ News and Current Affairs, 25 August 2014.
30. Toby Sterling, "Netherlands' Dijsselbloem seeks second term as Eurogroup president", Reuters, 2015.
31. Thomas Escritt, "Dijsselbloem promises closer EMU integration if re-appointed", Reuters, 16 June 2015.
32. Zeke Turner, "Dijsselbloem secures second term", Politico Europe; accessed 28 August 2017.
33. Eder, Florian & Zeke Turner "Five horsemen of the euro's future", Politico Europe; accessed 31 May 2017.
34. Francesco Guarascio (2 August 2019), EU settles on World Bank's Georgieva to lead IMF Reuters.
35. McClean, Paul; Khan, Mehreen (21 March 2017). "Dijsselbloem under fire after saying eurozone countries wasted money on 'alcohol and women'". Financial Times. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
36. "Dijsselbloem under fire after saying eurozone countries wasted money on 'alcohol and women'". Financial Times. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
37. "Head of Eurogroup in 'drinks and women' row". Sky News. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
38. Editorial, Reuters. "Portugal PM demands Dijsselbloem step down over "xenophobic" remarks". Reuters UK. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
39. "Renzi calls on Eurogroup chief to quit over 'drinks and women' comment". Financial Times. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
40. "Dijsselbloem stands by controversial 'drink and women' comments - DutchNews.nl". 10 April 2017. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
41. "Dijsselbloem shunned over 'Schnapps and women' statement; "It's like a committed a war crime"". 10 April 2017. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
42. Board of Governors Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
43. Board of Governors European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
44. Board of Governors European Investment Bank (EIB).
45. Board of Governors Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), World Bank Group.
46. Board of Governors World Bank.
47. Europe Policy Group World Economic Forum.
48. "How Jeroen Dijsselbloem became Mr Euro from being virtually unknown", The Economic Times, 13 July 2015

External links

Official

• (in Dutch) Ir. J.R.V.A. (Jeroen) Dijsselbloem Parlement & Politiek