page_title: Jeroen Dijsselbloem
section_title: President of the Eurogroup (2013–2018)
hierarchical_section_title: Jeroen Dijsselbloem / Political career / President of the Eurogroup (2013–2018)
caption_attribution_description: Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Minister, Ministry of Finance, The Netherlands Photo: Aron Urb (EU2017EE)
context_page_description: Jeroen René Victor Anton Dijsselbloem is a Dutch politician and economist serving as Chairman of the Dutch Safety Board since 1 May 2019. A member of the Labour Party, he has also been Chairman of the supervisory board of Wageningen University since 1 April 2019.
  Dijsselbloem was Minister of Finance in the Second Rutte cabinet, serving from 5 November 2012 to 26 October 2017. He also served as President of the Eurogroup from 21 January 2013 to 12 January 2018 and President of the Board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism from 11 February 2013 until 12 January 2018.
context_section_description: On 21 January 2013, Dijsselbloem took office as President of the Eurogroup, a grouping of the Ministers of Finance of the Eurozone, those member states of the European Union (EU) which have adopted the euro as their official currency; he succeeded Jean-Claude Juncker. Spain was the only country not to back his candidacy.
  Dijsselbloem struggled early in his two and a half-year term and faced criticism for his handling of the "Cyprus bail-in." In March 2013, he took the lead in the negotiation, conclusion and subsequent public promotion of the bailout. He attracted criticism for the precedent of taking depositors' balances as part of bank rescues but said "I am pretty confident that the markets will see this as a sensible, very concentrated and direct approach instead of a more general approach... It will force all financial institutions, as well as investors, to think about the risks they are taking on because they will now have to realise that it may also hurt them."
  On 24 March 2013, the Financial Times and Reuters reported that Dijsselbloem saw the Cyprus bail-in as a template for resolution of a bankruptcy. However, it was the interviewer that had used the word "template" and not Dijsselbloem himself. On 26 March 2013, Dijsselbloem said explicitly that he did not consider the Cyprus case to be a template.
  As Eurogroup head, Dijsselbloem later represented European creditors in negotiations with Greece over its bailout packages following Syriza's victory in the January 2015 legislative election. Initially the Greek government formed by Syriza and the Independent Greeks pursued bilateral talks with creditors and later the Eurogroup agreed on an extension of the bailout for four months. The negotiations for a new bailout package failed to meet the deadline for a €1.1 billion repayment to the IMF on midnight 1 July 2015 (Athens time). After the 5 July Greek referendum in which the then outstanding bailout offer from the Eurogroup was rejected by 61% of voters, a crisis summit was held on 12 July to negotiate Greece's new bailout request. Ahead of the summit, Dijsselbloem questioned whether the Greek proposals were credible.
  A deal for a new bailout package between the parties was finally agreed on Monday 13 July. During the debate on the third bailout agreement in the House of Representatives of the Netherlands on 15 July, Dijsselbloem criticised the Syriza government as ideologues, saying that their "every sentence had ideological baggage". He also received criticism for subterfuge in return from Greece's chief negotiator, the Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis, who published this account in his book  'Adults in the Room' "From my first Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem began an intensive campaign to bypass me altogether. He would phone Alexis Tsipras, my prime minister, directly – even visiting him in his hotel room in Brussels. By hinting at a softer stance if Tsipras agreed to spare him from having to deal with me, Dijsselbloem succeeded in weakening my position in the Eurogroup – to the detriment, primarily, of Tsipras".
  In August 2014, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her backing to Spain's Economy Minister, Luis de Guindos, in his bid to succeed Dijsselbloem as head of the Eurogroup from 2015; De Guindos is a member of the same center-right political European People’s Party political bloc. Meanwhile, on 5 June 2015, Dijsselbloem announced he would seek a second term, prompting de Guindos saying he would mount a challenge. In a subsequent letter requesting that he be reappointed to serve another two-and-a-half years as Eurogroup chair, Dijsselbloem pledged that he would push for eurozone-wide social and fiscal reforms designed to promote the smooth functioning of the currency union. Once he picked up 10 votes at a Eurogroup meeting in July 2015, the remaining countries decided to vote unanimously for a second term.
  In June 2015, Dijsselbloem, alongside Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Juncker at the European Commission and Donald Tusk at the European Council, issued the so-called "Five Presiden
caption: Dijsselbloem in 2017
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 5D Mark III", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6.0 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2017:09:16 10:03:34", "Image Artist": "Aron Urb", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "892", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "13621", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/400", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:09:16 08:50:14", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2017:09:16 08:50:14", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "540241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "17/4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "105", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "32", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "32", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1600", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1600", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "193029003672", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[70, 300, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "000013358c"}