PERSON: Mark Rutte

Secretary General

Mark Rutte born 14 February 1967) is a Dutch politician who has served as the 14th secretary general of NATO since October 2024. He previously served as prime minister of the Netherlands from 2010 to 2024 and leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) from 2006 to 2023. Serving a total of almost 14 years, Rutte is the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history.

Rutte was born in The Hague, in the province of South Holland, to a Dutch Reformed family. He is the youngest child of Izaäk Rutte (5 October 1909 – 22 April 1988), a merchant, and his second wife Hermina Cornelia Dilling (13 November 1923 – 13 May 2020), a secretary. Izaäk Rutte worked for a trading company; first as an importer in the Dutch East Indies; he later ran a car dealership. His second wife was a sister of his first wife, Petronella Hermanna Dilling (17 March 1910 – 20 July 1945), who died while they were interned together in Tjideng, a prisoner-of-war camp in Batavia (Jakarta1, Indonesia), during World War II. Rutte has seven siblings as a result of his father’s two marriages. One of his Elder brothers died from AIDS in the 1980s. Rutte later described the deaths of his brother and his father as events that changed the course of his life.

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