Dutch leader, prepared for EU summit impasse, brings book to read

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte arrived at an EU summit on Thursday armed with a biography of Chopin, reading material he said to pass the time for an inevitable impasse over the bloc's long-term budget. The budget talks are exceptionally difficult because of a 75 billion euro financing gap left by the withdrawal from the EU of Britain, which was the second-largest net contributor.

The Netherlands and three other countries that are also net contributors are determined to cap spending for 2021-27 at 1.0% of the 27 member states' gross national income (GNI). Net beneficiaries want a bigger pie and, as the leaders arrived for their special budget summit on Thursday, they confirmed one by one that no one was about to give ground.

"I brought a book, the biography of Chopin with me," Rutte told reporters. "Our position is known and I don't see what is there to negotiate." A Dutch official said Rutte had traveled to Poland for last month's Auschwitz memorial ceremony and on the way back was told he should read the biography of Polish composer Frederic Chopin.

Rutte acknowledged that European Council President and former Belgian prime minister Charles Michel, who will chair the summit, was working hard to unite the 27 leaders on the budget. "Charles Michel is doing his best but it's easier to form a Belgian government than to have Europe come out of these budget talks," Rutte said.

Belgium's squabbling politicians from the country's Dutch- and French-speaking communities have been unable to form a government for more than a year, during some of which Michel was caretaker prime minister. It is not the first time that Belgium has had no government. In 2010, efforts to form a governing coalition took a world record of 541 days.