Netherlands' Rutte Reaches to the Right

By VANESSA MOCK And MAARTEN VAN TARTWIJK

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European Pressphoto Agency

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, center, campaigns in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, on Saturday.

DORDRECHT, Netherlands — A surge of popular support for a rising star in Dutch politics has forced Prime Minister Mark Rutte on the defensive, leading him to strike a harder line on euro-zone bailouts ahead of a general election on Wednesday that could have broad repercussions across Europe.

With weekend opinion polls predicting a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Rutte's center-right Liberal Party and Diederik Samsom's center-left Labor Party, Mr. Rutte is trying to woo voters further to the right of the political spectrum by stressing limits to the help that struggling euro-zone countries can expect from taxpayers in the Netherlands.

Mr. Samsom, who has burnished his support with polished performances in television debates, has urged a softening of the budget austerity that has dominated the approach so far to handling the crisis in the Netherlands and the euro-zone.

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The two parties are each set to win 35 seats in the 150-seat parliament on Wednesday, according to a weekend poll by Ipsos Synovate.

As one of the euro zone's richest members, the Netherlands has been a key contributor to euro-zone bailouts, but radical parties have leapt on the growing public discontent over the bailouts, deriding Mr. Rutte as a soft touch who has signed blank checks to help Greece and others at a time of stringent spending cuts at home. Mr. Rutte's coalition collapsed in April in a dispute over further austerity measures needed to meet European Union budget targets.

The leader of the party with most seats will win the right to lead a coalition, but the polls increasingly suggest that, whatever their election differences, the two leaders will have to cooperate to create a coalition after the election. Over the past two years, Mr. Rutte relied on Labor to secure parliamentary majorities to approve euro-zone bailouts and expand the bloc's rescue funds.

Mr. Rutte last week stunned viewers during a televised election debate when he said he wouldn't support giving more aid to Greece. On campaign in the market town of Dordrecht, he struck an equally hard line. "I believe we've now come to the point where we have to say 'Stop'," he told The Wall Street Journal. "Greece has consistently under-performed on its commitments. I think it's better for Greece to stay within the euro-area...but I'm not willing to give them more money."

Greece, said Mr. Rutte, had already received "enormous sums" totaling €240 billion ($308 billion) in two separate rescue packages from its euro-zone partners and the International Monetary Fund. The Dutch premier wouldn't elaborate on his likely response to the request expected soon from Athens for more funds and more time to hit budget targets, saying Greece could plug small financing gaps "by going to the markets."

Mr. Rutte has been on the defensive ever since the electoral campaign kicked off last month, seeing him eclipsed first by the euro-skeptic Socialists, and more recently by the meteoric rise of Mr. Samsom.

Mr. Samsom has accused Mr. Rutte of holding up a solution to the euro-zone crisis. "The austerity policy from the last two years didn't work. We need growth in Europe," he said at a campaign event Saturday in the city of Utrecht.

He believes Greece must be given more breathing space if that should prevent it from leaving the euro zone. "We should support the euro-zone, even when it costs some money. Doing nothing and letting it fall apart, will cost more," he said, as he handed out red roses to shoppers strolling along the canals of Utrecht's city center.

Liberal Party officials say Mr. Rutte is now deliberately cloaking himself in some of the euro-skeptic garb of the populist Freedom Party, its main rival to the right. Its leader Geert Wilders, who was responsible for the government's collapse when he refused to back a budget agreement, has called for the Netherlands to pull out of the EU, give up the euro and go back to the guilder.

"Rutte has to snatch votes from Wilders in order to get ahead. But he overshot himself with his comments on Greece, which were very much criticized in the Dutch media," said Rinus van Schendelen, a professor of political sciences at Rotterdam's Eramus University.

At a campaign event in the southern town of Tilburg, Mr. Wilders, who has been lagging in the polls, said that the Netherlands should become an "independent and sovereign country again," but that he would be willing to join a coalition government when an opportunity arises. But he professed confidence in a good result.

"Voters don't understand why we cut the benefits of the elderly and sick people and then send that money to bankrupt countries like Greece or Spain. That money will never ever be returned," he said.

Mr. Rutte's new approach went down well with some voters in the western market town of Dordrecht, where many thronged to have their photos taken with him. "I'm on the same page," said Ronald Thijssen, a printing technician and resident. "We can't keeping shelling out, it's clear the Greeks are unable to get their act together; time's run out."

Write to Vanessa Mock at vanessa.mock@dowjones.com and Maarten van Tartwijk at maarten.vantartwijk@dowjones.com