PM Rutte Under Pressure As 'Nokiagate' Debate Underway

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is under significant pressure regarding his deletion of text messages for a number of years on his gov't mobile telephone. All ministerial correspondence is supposed to be kept as a matter of public record to ensure accountability, but Dutch daily de Volkskrant reports that Rutte has been deleting all messages from his old Nokia phone (he has previously stated his dislike for smartphones) at the end of each day for years.

• The Dutch House of Representatives is currently debating the issue after Rutte submitted a letter to parliament stating that the messages could not be recovered and that he only forwarded those "important for administrative decision making" to be archived.
• Rutte has indicated that he will resign if MPs state that they do not trust him, but it is not clear what the threshold for this may be.
• Rutte's four-party coalition gov't currently holds 77 seats in the House of Representatives to the opposition's 73.
• Opinion polling at present shows that Rutte's centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and its coalition partners the liberal Democrats 66 (D66), the centrist Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), and the social conservative Christian Union (CU) would all be at risk of losing seats in the event of a snap election. As such, Rutte's position may be protected by gov't MPs, even if their initial inclinations would not be to support the four-term PM.