Portugal at the time called for the Dutch Finance Minister to stand down and said he was completely out of tune with reality.
Dijsselbloem to this day has refused to apologise, and stood by his comments that countries like Portugal should “also have duties and can’t spend their money on women and alcohol and then ask for help.”
Oddly enough, despite his views on how countries like Portugal misuse funds, European Finance Ministers decided to choose Portugal’s Mário Centeno to replace him as the most important Finance Minister in Europe earlier this month as his tenure drew to a close.
Portugal’s Prime Minister, António Costa, also called for Jereon Dijsselbloem to resign and said his comments in a newspaper interview about southern European countries were “absolutely unacceptable” and “very dangerous”.
“Europe will only be credible as a common project on the day that Mr. Djisselblom stops being president of the Eurogroup and, of course, that there is an apology to all the countries and peoples who were profoundly offended by these statements,” Prime Minister Costa was reported as saying by the Lusa News Agency.
“As a social democrat, I consider solidarity an extremely important value. But we also have obligations. You cannot spend all your money on women and alcohol and then ask for help”, Dijsselbloem said in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
“These statements by Mr. Jeroen Dijsselbloem are absolutely unacceptable. They’re also very dangerous, because they show the dangers of populism and that populism is not only in those who have the courage to admit that they are. It’s also in those who appear wearing sheep’s clothing, because they say things that are racist, xenophobic and sexist, like the remarks by Mr. Dijsselbloem”, António Costa said.