A few years later, the former Dutch finance minister Wopke Hoekstra apologizes for the positions he held at the time during an appearance before the European Parliament's Environment Committee. In October 2020, when the Covid pandemic was still in full swing, Mark Rutte's former minister opposed the release of European aid for Spain and Italy. "At the beginning of the pandemic I did not take sufficient account of the difficulties of some Member States, and I would like to let them know that I now think I should have acted differently," the new EU climate candidate said today. "As a minister, I have worked closely with colleagues from all over Europe and have always sought to unite national and European interests," he explained. "I acknowledge that I have not always been successful at this. During the initial weeks of the pandemic, when Spain and Italy demanded a coordinated European response to the virus's economic impact, Hoekstra proposed that the European Commission investigate EU member states that "had not reformed their economies." In essence, he requested that Italy be investigated.
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