Mark Rutte will say his goodbyes to EU leaders at his last EU summit this week

Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte is attending his final European Union Summit as the Dutch political leader on Thursday and Friday after over 100 summits as the country's longest-serving prime minister. He said he is already looking back on it with nostalgia. Rutte thinks it is everybody's job to get along with everyone in the interests of their own country, he said before the start of the summit on Thursday. "It is a little like a self-help group where you can get together to get things off your chest and ask how things are going with the other person," said Rutte.

With the Belgian leaders, the conversations were often about the long government formation periods, which often take much longer than in the Netherlands. These private conversations about other the political issues other EU countries were dealing with often felt special, Rutte said.

"Most EU leaders are also friendly, because everyone is a politician, and they all have their own domestic issues."

He did not single out one specific government leader that he will miss. He praised the message he received on Thursday morning from the former German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

On Thursday morning, while driving to Brussels, Rutte calculated that he had attended 84 EU summits. He had been prime minister for 14 years and thought that he had been to an average of six summits a year, but in reality, it was more. "Geez, well, that's something."

At this moment, he feels a sense of nostalgia, but he does not have the time to calmly reflect on it. "The hard thing is that I am saying goodbye in a type of Truman Show way with all these cameras here," he said, referring to the film in which a man has been living on a movie set disguised as a city without knowing it.

"I am thinking about many of these points: the last [Dutch] Council of Ministers, the last European Council, the last meetings at the General Affairs [Ministry], the last parliamentary debate," Rutte said. "I think this melancholy will really set in on July 2 after 1 o'clock when I will be alone and will start to reminisce."

The outgoing prime minister made specific mention of that date, as it is when the King Willem-Alexander will install a new Cabinet under incoming Prime Minister Dick Schoof.

Rutte will urge the other EU leaders to prevent the European Union from becoming divided. "Keep things together," he is planning to say as his final message at an EU summit. He added that this will be his only message at the time.

"The European Union is crucial," Rutte emphasized upon his arrival at the summit in Brussels." Not only for our jobs, our livelihood, the market, and the currency, but also in this unstable world."

He added that it is great that we have the European Union, which keeps us embedded in a strong structure.