Mark Rutte

The United States pressured the Dutch government, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte himself, to block the sale of ASML chip manufacturing technology to China, Reuters reports based on anonymous sources. According to the news agency, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lobbied the Dutch government, and White House officials shared classified intelligence with Rutte to convince him not to allow the sale. 

Protesting farmers will not block supermarkets' distribution centers on Wednesday, the lawyer representing action group Farmers Defense Force (FDF) promised in court on Monday in summary proceedings filed by supermarket chains' organization CBL. According to the lawyer, the FDF never planned to block distribution centers and cause supermarkets to have empty shelves the week before Christmas, NOS reports.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte was spotted in a video that leaked from the NATO summit currently happening in London. The video shows a group of world leaders - seemingly unaware that they are being recorded - apparently mocking American president Donald Trump and his habits during a gathering on Tuesday.

The group of chatting world leaders include Rutte, Princess Anne, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. 

Prime Minister Mark Rutte is meeting with football association KNVB on Thursday to discuss how to tackle racism on and along the fields. The government is expected to propose more cameras, to make it easier to recognize supporters who misbehave. The KNVB will likely impose longer stadium bans on misbehaving supporters, sources told NOS.

Two incidents of football supporters shouting racist remarks at players this weekend left Prime Minister Mark Rutte furious. In both cases black players were either called or linked to Zwarte Piet - a blackface character from the Netherlands' Sinterklaas celebration. "It makes you hopeless, doesn't it", Rutte said on Monday, RTL Nieuws reports. "This society cannot go further if we treat each other this way."

Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok came out against his fellow conservative VVD party members on Friday, saying he was opposed to any suggestion that Dutch people who joined ISIS should receive capital punishment in Iraq. Some MPs in the party, which is led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, said that Dutch enemy combatants should face trial in Iraq where they would be eligible for the death penalty.

"That can be the ultimate consequence," said Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, a VVD parliamentarian, according to the ANP newswire.

The Dutch cabinet and European leaders should be cautiously pleased that a deal has been reached between the U.K. and the European Union over remaining Brexit issues, said Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands. “Now we have to study the details,” he told broadcaster NOS.

On the surface “it is very encouraging. We are very happy about it.”

The relationship between the Netherlands and the United States has "cooled down" and "soured" according to Dutch diplomats and diplomatic experts. "There is declining confidence, I hear at the top of Dutch diplomacy", diplomatic expert Robert van de Roer said to RTL Nieuws. "Behind the scenes you hear: America is not America anymore."

Students who started studying in the Netherlands in the 2015/2016 academic year or later want the Dutch government to pay back their study loans. They therefore created a Facebook event to bombard Prime Minister Mark Rutte with "Tikkies", referring to an ABN Amro app with which you can send a quick payment request to a mobile number. The Facebook event incudes a number for Rutte's party the VVD.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte understands why American president Donald Trump is critical of NATO and EU countries' Defense spending, he said in a speech about cooperation between the United States and the Netherlands. He also called Trump's criticism of the United Nations "at its core, justified", RTL Nieuws reports.

The fight against organized crime is complicated, but can be won, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on the second day of the parliamentary debate on the national budget. Ferdinand Grapperhaus agreed with Rutte’s standpoint. The Security and Justice Minister from the PM’s conservative VVD party backed a call from several politicians to form a specialized unit focused solely on tackling drug crime.