That Rutte deleted the messages appears from an inventory list compiled by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in response to a WOB request from the paper. That list mentions SMS traffic between March 2020 and June 2020, when the corona crisis was in full swing.
We don’t know what was in the text messages at the moment. A month after the SMS gate, the cabinet decided to declare all communications between ministers secret, so as not to endanger the unity of the cabinet. As a result, it’s now more difficult to check exactly which messages Rutte has deleted, by looking at what messages other ministers have saved.
To delete
Earlier this year, Rutte was found to be deleting text messages from her phone every day due to limited storage space. He himself judged whether the text messages were relevant enough to archive. At the time, the Prime Minister was faced with a motion of no confidence in the House of Representatives.