DUTCH Prime Minister Mark Rutte said today that the European Union is not “an unstoppable train speeding towards federalism,” as he urged more deregulation, military spending and harder borders.

Speaking in Berlin, he said that his first proposal for an EU of “prosperity, security and stability” was to “make Europe’s services market truly open.”

He took aim at the “5,000 protected professions in the EU. That’s … 22 per cent of all workers. I say: let’s abolish these protected professions.”

Mr Rutte even specifically mentioned deregulating civil notaries. Similar attacks on notaries, among many other jobs, by French President Emmanuel Macron sparked mass public protests.

He praised Mr Macron for taking “tough measures in the labour market and the pension system” — slashing workers’ rights and making deep cuts to pensions.

Meanwhile he urged that budgetary restrictions on eurozone countries be enforced more rigidly on laggards who had “abstain[ed] from modernising their economies” — a euphemism for privatisation and deregulation.

And he praised the austerity measures forced by the EU on Spain, Portugal and Ireland following the bankers’ crash of 2008, saying it was “a painful process” but claiming that “it does pay off.”

He cited his own country as evidence for that, with his government having cut spending by tens of billions of euros — with similar results as in Britain, with markedly increased poverty. At one point two-thirds of Dutch doctors reported seeing patients too poor to afford their prescriptions.

While Mr Rutte advocated cutting EU development spending, he said the bloc should be spending more on the military, toughening up its borders to keep out refugees and more quickly deporting those who make it.

Part of that would be standing permission for military convoys to cross EU member states’ borders, with money spent on beefing up roads to cope with heavy materiel.

While Mr Rutte positioned his speech in opposition to the more federalist agenda pushed by Mr Macron, many of their prescriptions are similar — expanding neoliberal reforms while further militarising the EU.

The key difference between the approaches appears to be that Mr Rutte wants to keep EU decision-making as it is and cut the bloc’s budget, while Mr Macron and his supporters wish to further empower the Brussels bureaucracy.