Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is the first Southern European leader to visit Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday evening.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa will follow on Monday.
They want to persuade Rutte to soften his harsh attitude to the European recovery fund. This fund is intended to help countries overcome the corona crisis, which has particularly affected the South.
Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron and EU President Charles Michel also visited The Hague to speak about this.
At the end of next week, an extraordinary summit of EU leaders will be held in Brussels on the multi-annual budget from 2021 to 2027 and the associated recovery fund. Rutte spoke about this with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday evening in Berlin. Germany will chair the EU this six months.
Rutte focuses on two things for the top. He wants to keep the discount on payment to the EU. That is going in the right direction, insiders say.
Southern countries receiving money from the recovery fund must also reform. Like Austria, Sweden and Denmark, the Netherlands also prefers that the fund only provides loans.
The European Commission has proposed a fund of EUR 750 billion. Two-thirds of this consist of subsidies and one-third of loans. A compromise seems possible here. Rutte says she is always in no hurry to achieve it, Berlin wants an agreement quickly, just like the European Commission.
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