Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday laid out his vision for post-Brexit Europe, saying that further integration is not inevitable, that the European Union's budget should shrink, and that spending on poorer countries should be permanently linked to economic reforms.
In a speech in Berlin positioning the Netherlands as sceptical of further European integration, but in favour of enforcing existing agreements more vigorously, Rutte described an EU where "Brussels serves the member states, and not the other way around."
He also called for the creation of a mechanism for restructuring the debts of member states in fiscal difficulties so that private investors, not other countries' taxpayers, should foot the bill if investors "run out of luck."
