Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte will not replace NATO CEO Jens Stoltenberg next year. “I don’t compete,” he said upon arrival at the NATO summit in Lithuania.

Rumors about Rutte’s switch to NATO have been circulating for years. The military alliance asked Stoltenberg to stay another year because there was no agreement on his replacement. But next year the Norwegian will actually retire. When Rutte announced his retirement from Dutch politics on Monday, it sparked fresh speculation about a follow-up to NATO headquarters.

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But Rutte is ‘out of the race’, he underlined. Leaders of other NATO countries will not try to persuade him after consistent public “no” statements, he said. “I think they hear me now.” Rutte is most interested in the presidency of the European Commission, insiders recently suggested. He would not be interested in another international job.

There can be no question of the fall of the cabinet

Rutte was also not asked by other leaders about the collapse of his cabinet and his resignation announcement, he said. If they did, he would explain to them that the Netherlands had a ‘very special’ coalition system that could bring down the government.

While Rutte did not want to talk to the Dutch press in Vilnius about the fall of the cabinet, the outgoing prime minister did the same to foreign media. There he announced that his departure from politics was necessary to bring about ‘change’.

Foreign government leaders also responded to the news about Rutte. For example, Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, described Rutte as someone who wants to take a ‘clear direction’ and can sometimes be ‘tough’ ‘when necessary’. “From a European point of view,” Frederiksen considers his departure “a shame,” he said in a conversation with Europe reporter Geert Jan Hahn.

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Rutte is confident that the Netherlands’ reputation abroad will not suffer from his departure. According to him, this was mainly caused by diplomats and civil servants. Occasionally a Prime Minister or another minister may ‘head the ball’, but ‘let’s be honest, that’s the easy part’. He doesn’t want to relive those tumultuous days in The Hague, but ‘it’s back to work now’.