Ruud Lubbers
Dutch prime minister who brokered the Maastricht treaty and later served as head of the UNHCR
RUUD LUBBERS, who has died aged 78, was the longest-serving prime minister of the Netherlands, from 1982 to 1994, and later, from 2001, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, a post from which he was forced to step down in 2005 over accusations of sexual harassment.
“I liked Mr Lubbers, a young practical businessman who now applied his talents to good effect in Dutch politics” wrote Margaret Thatcher in The Downing Street Years. “Although his instincts were federalist” she went on, “… in day-today community business we often found ourselves on the same side”.
Her successor John Major described Lubbers as “among Britain’s closest friends. He was prepared to ruffle feathers and did so, while avoiding slogans and remaining full of common sense.”
Yet Lubbers was the man who, as president of the European Council of Ministers during the second half of 1991, brokered the Maastricht treaty.
Popular, experienced, pragmatic and multilingual, Lubbers was seen as the ideal man to steer what was billed as “a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” and to lay the foundations for the euro, to a successful conclusion.
In fact he almost fell at the first hurdle when, on September 30 1991 a comprehensive Dutch scheme for political union, drafted by Piet Dankert, the Europe minister in the Dutch coalition government, was trashed by almost every other member state as too federalist.
Although he could not disown the draft altogether, Lubbers somehow escaped the blame and set about working out a form of words to satisfy all. The Netherlands had held the commission presidency twice during his time as prime minister and both times he was required to play the role of honest broker between other leaders, developing a style known as the “Lubbers confessional” in which he would see all parties to a dispute one at a time, coax their bottom lines out of them and gently persuade them to compromise. His patience was said to be limitless and his victims, according to one commentator, “usually succumb to frustration, confusion or plain exhaustion”.
Britain’s prime minister, John Major, was widely vilified by the press and within his own party for signing up to the Maastricht treaty, but his success in winning opt-outs on the single currency and the “social chapter” reflected his ability to match Lubbers in patience and diplomacy.
“There are two models of negotiation,” Lubbers observed: “The model of using arguments, trying to convince people, doing that in a good sequence with good timing. And then you have the other model, negotiating emotionally. Most political leaders do it emotionally. They shout at you. But John Major, never. A gentleman, well-briefed, rational, well-informed.”
The respect was mutual. “Throughout these discussions, which must have been very tiresome for him,” Major recalled in his autobiography, “Ruud Lubbers behaved impeccably. He was well briefed, inventive and calm; at no time did tempers flare, although with more combustible natures they might well have done.”
Looking back in 2011 on Europe post-maastricht, however, Lubbers admitted that things had not progressed as he had hoped: “I thought that the euro would be so successful that it would lead to political union and that it would be attractive for other states to join. This was a mistake.”
Rudolphus Franciscus Marie “Ruud” Lubbers was born on May 7 1939 into a wealthy Roman Catholic family, the owners of a major construction and civil engineering company, in mainly Protestant Rotterdam. After education at a Jesuit college, he studied economics at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, where he was a student of the Nobel prizewinner Jan Tinbergen. He originally planned an academic career, but instead he joined the family business, becoming co-director of the firm with his brother in 1965 after their father’s sudden death.
He entered politics in 1973 when he accepted an invitation to be the Minister of Economic Affairs in the cabinet of Joop den Uyl. Subsequently elected to the Dutch House of Representatives, he became parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal, a broadly centrist party formed in 1977 under Dries van Agt from three smaller parties. When Van Agt unexpectedly stepped down after winning an election in 1982, Lubbers was elected to succeed him and became the youngest prime minister in Dutch history.
He led three successive Cdadominated coalition governments over 12 years and was regarded by many as an ideological soulmate of Margaret Thatcher. One of his campaign slogans was: “Meer markt, minder overheid” (more market, less government) and his years in office were marked by cutbacks in public spending and far-reaching deregulation and privatisation, a strategy that ushered in years of growth.
In 1984 he skilfully deflected a confrontation with the US over the installation of cruise missiles in the Netherlands when an overwhelming majority in the country opposed it. Lubbers agreed to accept the missiles, but not until 1988, two years later than the American timetable, and only if the Soviet Union continued to deploy its SS-20 rockets in Eastern Europe. The problem had evaporated by his deadline because the Soviet Union and the Reagan administration had agreed to scrap intermediate and shorter range missiles.
Lubbers remained popular with Dutch voters and stepped down voluntarily in 1994.
Before retiring from national politics, Lubbers was tipped to succeed Jacques Delors as president of the European Commission, but somewhere along the line he had got on the wrong side of German chancellor Helmut Kohl, and the job went to Jacques Santer in 1994. His candidacy for the post of Nato secretary general was scuppered by the US. Instead he entered the world of academia, lecturing at Harvard and at Tilburg University in the Netherlands until 2001, when he was appointed UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
He was considered enough of a success in the job, looking after the world’s 17 million refugees, that his initial three-year term was extended by two years on the recommendation of the UN secretary general Kofi Annan. Overseeing a global staff of 6,000 in 115 countries, he watched over refugee programmes everywhere from Africa to Afghanistan. Out of his own pocket he donated some $300,000 to the agency every year to cover his own $167,000 annual salary and travel expenses.
But his accomplishments were overshadowed by a sexual harassment case brought by an American UNHCR employee, who accused him of improperly touching her after a meeting in December 2003. Lubbers denied impropriety, saying he had intended an innocent “friendly gesture”. He fought for more than a year to save his reputation and job, but an internal UN investigation in 2004 found a pattern of sexual misconduct. Kofi Annan initially declined to act, saying the findings were not strong enough for dismissal. But after the report leaked to the press and as Annan himself came under pressure over the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, he asked Lubbers to resign.
Lubbers depicted himself as the victim of a smear campaign while Annan reiterated his belief that that “the evidence did not support the accusation”, but observed that, because of ongoing media pressure, Lubber’s resignation had been in the best interests of the UNHCR.
Subsequently Lubbers was presented with the first annual UNHCR Achievement Award for exceptional services to the world’s refugees.
Lubbers remained a devout Catholic and, though a multi-millionaire, was unostentatious in his personal life, living in a suburban house on the outskirts of Rotterdam, though his insistence on minimal security sometimes got him into scrapes. A firebomb was once thrown into his living room, and on another occasion a man armed with a knife got into his car when it stopped at a corner. On both occasions Lubbers was unhurt.
In 1962 he married Ria Hoogeweegen, who survives him with their daughter and two sons.
Ruud Lubbers, born May 7 1939, died February 14 2018