Wider Europe Briefing: What To Expect From NATO’s New Boss, Mark Rutte

Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL’s newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe’s Eastern neighborhoods.

I’m RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I’m drilling down on two big issues: the leadership vacuum at the OSCE and what Mark Rutte will have on his plate at NATO.

Briefing #1: Stalemate At The OSCE

What You Need To Know: The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is currently leaderless and rudderless. As of September 4, the four top positions in the organization — the secretary-general, the director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the high commissioner on national minorities, and the representative on freedom of the media — have been run by so-called “officers-in-charge” with no executive powers. The mandates for the four roles have expired with no new appointees in place.

This after Malta, the chair of the OSCE for 2024, spent the entire summer trying to find four leaders that the 57 OSCE member countries from Europe, Asia, and North America could agree on. The current stalemate could potentially drag on through the fall, leaving one of the few political organizations in which all European states still meet in complete disarray.

Deep Background: The whole process started in early May, with Malta calling for candidates for the positions. Thirteen candidates were put forward for the four roles by the deadline at the end of that month. Then Valletta founded a “Group of Friends of the OSCE Chairmanship,” which consisted of representatives from Austria, Finland, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Turkmenistan, and the United Kingdom, to help sift through the candidacies and see if some sort of consensus could be found.

After asking the candidates about issues such as the future role of the OSCE, Russia’s continued presence in the organization, and the war in Ukraine, the group presented a package in early August referred to as the “chair’s proposal.” In this, Igli Hasani, the current Albanian foreign minister, would be the new secretary-general; Dutch diplomat Christophe Kamp would take over the ODIHR; the former Georgian state minister for reconciliation and civic equality, Ketevan Tsikhelashvili, would take over as the new high commissioner on national minorities; and the post of representative on freedom of the media was suggested for Jan Braathu, a Norwegian diplomat and current head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo.

But, so far, it’s not been plain sailing. In an internal document authored by Malta and seen by RFE/RL, it was noted in September that, “while the overwhelming majority of participating states expressed their readiness to join consensus, the chair took note at the Preparatory Committee meeting of 22 August 2024 that full agreement had not yet been reached.”

The paper outlined that the main issue was a so-called “alternative proposal” pushed jointly by Greece and Turkey. In this possible lineup, Braathu and Tsikhelashvili remain in the same positions, but instead of Hasani and Kamp, the Ankara and Athens duo are proposing former Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu as secretary-general and Greek diplomat Maria Telalian for the ODIHR job.

This proposal notes that, “in response to the requests from both [Turkey] and Greece, and in recognition of the political significance of their joint candidacies…the chair is providing the opportunity for participating states to consider the following alternative package.” After that, Valletta called for an informal meeting at the ambassadorial level in Vienna, where the organization is based, on September 23 to discuss both packages and get some clarity.

Drilling Down

• Clarity is not what they got. While the “chair’s proposal” still enjoys “wide support,” according to diplomats I have spoken to, the Greek-Turkish proposal also has its supporters.
• This proposal is presented as a “unity and compromise” deal, bringing together two historical rivals. Cyprus, which normally votes against anything Turkish, backed down at the September 23 meeting, clearing one potential roadblock.
• The EU is split. Normally, EU countries, which represent nearly half of the OSCE’s membership, try to maintain a united front, but this time, Malta and Greece are in different corners — with many member states apparently caught in the middle.
• The impasse has also opened another can of worms. Candidates proposed earlier, who didn’t get much initial support, are suddenly back on the table, such as Bosnian Dunja Mijatovic, who is eyeing the ODIHR job.
• Enter Russia. What surprised some during the process was that there weren’t any clear Moscow-backed candidates for any of the four positions — something of an anomaly, as the Kremlin had previously been rather active in putting names forward.
• Russia does, however, reject the idea of having Tsikhelashvili as the high commissioner on national minorities, especially as she worked as a minister to reintegrate Russian-occupied South Ossetia and Abkhazia into Georgia. The problem here is that there are only two other known alternatives for the minorities job. One is Hungarian diplomat Rita Izsak-Ndiaye, whom the Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine find unpalatable due to Budapest’s close links to Moscow. The other candidate, Canadian John MacGregor, is currently the head of the OSCE center in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
• MacGregor would be a popular choice, but if he were to replace Tsikhelashvili in the “chair’s proposal,” the four top positions would be all male. Given that gender balance is a priority for the OSCE, this is not a small obstacle.
• The upshot is that we’re back to square one with no clear timelines. The issue could easily drag on up to the annual OSCE ministerial meeting in Malta on December 5-6. At this meeting, other issues need to be discussed, such as the organization’s future chairs. Finland will take over in 2025, but ideally the chairs for 2026 and 2027 should also be settled in December and discussion on that has not even started.

Briefing #2: Mark Rutte’s To-Do List At NATO

What You Need To Know: Today, October 1, Mark Rutte takes over from Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg as NATO’s secretary-general. Rutte, the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history, is very much seen as a “continuation candidate.” Like Stoltenberg, who served a decade at the helm of the military alliance, Rutte is known for having a talent for striking difficult political compromises. He enjoys widespread support among key member states, not in the least for his supposedly dry humor that can grease the wheels of diplomacy.

It will be something of a soft start for the Dutchman. On October 17-18, the Brussels headquarters will host the annual fall meeting of NATO’s 32 defense ministers. Subsequently, the foreign ministers will descend upon the Belgian capital on December 3-4. However, it is not anticipated that those ministerial meetings will yield much.

At first, Rutte is expected do a fair bit of traveling to key NATO capitals. It’s a long while away, but he’ll also have to start preparing for the NATO summit on June 24-26, 2025, in his hometown, The Hague. In order to cement his position within the military organization, it’s important that the summit is a success. At the top of his agenda, there are three topics he is expected to tackle: NATO’s collective defense, support for Ukraine, and a new Russia strategy.

Deep Background: None of these things are new; in fact Stoltenberg spent much of his time grappling with the same things. The Norwegian was, according to diplomats I have spoken to, always pushing for more ambitious language in NATO communiques on Ukraine. He was also reportedly key in securing a Ukraine command center in the German city of Wiesbaden to coordinate security assistance to Kyiv.

In the future, Rutte will be responsible for ensuring that the organization transitions from a somewhat American enterprise to one that includes a greater number of NATO allies. He will also likely be committed to continuing the alliance’s support for war-torn Ukraine.

On that, he enjoys close relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and, as Dutch prime minister, he helped get F-16 fighter aircraft sent to Ukraine, secured stronger EU economic sanctions on Moscow despite Dutch dependency on trade, and helped move Ukraine along the path toward EU membership.

One of the things he may have to deal with in the short term is the tricky question of whether Ukraine will get an invitation to join NATO. There is hope in Ukraine that the United States — partly as a result of outgoing President Joe Biden’s foreign policy — will consent to this soon.

Diplomats I have spoken to at NATO are less sure about this, however. Germany, Hungary, and Slovakia are still not convinced Ukraine belongs in the military alliance, plus there are other European states that also aren’t sure. There has been no real movement on this issue from what was agreed at this summer’s Washington summit, one diplomat told me, referring to the agreed line that “we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met.”

Drilling Down

• There is also the bread-and-butter issue of collective defense. There are gaps, notably on the alliance’s eastern flank. One thing for the alliance to address is to improve the so-called rotational model, in other words to get more air-defense systems on the vulnerable eastern flank.
• In the end, it comes down to one thing: the need for more spending on defense. That 23 out 32 NATO allies spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense is celebrated in Brussels, but as one country’s ambassador to the alliance told me: 2 percent spending on defense is not adequate and what’s needed is something closer to 3.5. The question is if Rutte, who was known as a prudent spender as prime minister, can cajole others to loosen the purse strings.
• And then there is Russia. Revising NATO’s Russian policy will be high on the agenda moving toward the summit in The Hague next year. NATO already agreed at the Washington summit that “Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to allies’ security.” But the question is if NATO will go further, perhaps coming up with some sort of “containment policy,” even though many don’t like the Cold War-like association of that phrase.
• And what of the NATO-Russia Council, which hasn’t met since just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022? And what about the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which established political guidelines between the alliance and the Kremlin?
• Given Rutte’s penchant for compromise and his leadership of a country that is a member of both the EU and NATO, many expect (or at least, hope) that he can improve NATO-EU cooperation. Not so much, perhaps, from an institutional point of view, but rather informally, member to member. There continues to be deadlock between Cyprus (on the EU side) and Turkey (on the NATO side), which results in the blocking of deeper, formal joint ventures between the two institutions.
• It could be that, for this, the stars are aligned. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen; her incoming foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas; and the new head of the European Council, Antonio Costa, are all ardent trans-Atlanticists. The same is true for Andrius Kubilius, the former Lithuanian prime minister and proposed European commissioner for defense.
• Whatever happens, it’s not going to be easy for Rutte. There will undoubtedly be issues with Hungary. Budapest was the last NATO member to give its approval for Rutte. Plus, the Dutchman and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have clashed before, notably when Rutte pushed for some EU funds meant for Hungary to be frozen.
• Rutte is sometimes known as a “Trump-whisperer” for his role in reportedly helping to convince Trump that it was the U.S. president’s push that contributed to European allies ramping up defense spending. So if Trump does return to the White House, that relationship would be key.
• Rutte will also need to pick his deputy. The two known candidates for the deputy secretary-general position are the former defense minister of North Macedonia, Radmila Sekerinska, and the former foreign minister of Bulgaria, Mariya Gabriel. Sekerinska is the presumed favorite, and there is also a possibility that former Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic could be in the running.
• There is a desire within NATO that the top job goes to a woman and someone from the alliance’s east. But as one NATO source told me: “We also wanted a woman from Eastern Europe as the UN secretary-general and ended up with a Portuguese man, Antonio Guterres, back in 2017.”

Looking Ahead

An interesting case is coming up in the General Court of the European Union on October 2. It concerns a ban, in place since 2022, on EU firms providing legal advice to the Russian government, as well as companies established in the country. Some European bar associations are contesting these sanctions, and the ruling will give an indication of the true strength of the bloc’s economic sanctions on Russia.

That’s all for this week! Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on X @RikardJozwiak, or on e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

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