Ruud Lubbers
Ruud Lubbers was prime minister of the Netherlands from 1982 to 1994, twelve years and three cabinets, the longest of any Dutch premier until Rutte passed him, the Christian Democrat businessman who took office in the worst recession since the war with unemployment at eight hundred thousand and a deficit of ten per cent, cut the civil service's pay by three per cent and the benefits with it, and brokered the Wassenaar agreement of November 1982 in which the unions accepted wage restraint for shorter hours, the model of consensus that the 1990s called the polder model and that gave the country the lowest unemployment in Europe. He also managed the cruise-missile decision of 1985, agreeing to deploy the American missiles and never having to. He chaired the European Council at Maastricht in December 1991 that made the treaty and the euro, and was blocked by Kohl from the Commission presidency in 1994 for having opposed German unification too openly. He was born in Rotterdam in 1939 into the family firm Hollandia, an engineering company he ran from 1963 while chairing the young Christian employers. He was the Labour government's economics minister at thirty-four in 1973, and led the Christian Democratic Appeal's parliamentary party from 1978 before the fall of Van Agt made him prime minister on 4 November 1982. The no-nonsense cabinets with the Liberals, 1982-89, were the austerity. The third, with Kok's Labour from 1989, was the social settlement, the disability reform that cost Labour a third of its voters, and the Schengen and Maastricht treaties. He had promised to leave and did in 1994. He was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 2001 until 2005, when he resigned over a harassment complaint the UN's own investigation had upheld and Annan had at first dismissed. He was the informateur who assembled Rutte's first cabinet in 2010, and died in Rotterdam in February 2018.
- Lived: 1939 CE – 2018 CE
- Nationality: Dutch
- Roles: prime minister, politician
