Late on the evening of 22 October 1983, Poul Schlüter telephones Rio Bravo to reach Helge Dohrmann, then the political leader of the Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet), who is contentedly enjoying his dinner.
Poul Schlüter — at the time Prime Minister and head of the so-called Four-Leaf Clover government — depended on the Progress Party’s support for the upcoming bill on the DKK 800 child benefit. Without it, both the 1984 budget and the Four-Leaf Clover government itself risked collapsing.
He had already secured an agreement with the Social Liberal Party (Det Radikale Venstre), meaning that with Helge Dohrmann’s endorsement he could remain at the head of a centre-right government. Poul Schlüter and Helge Dohrmann met the following morning and concluded what remains, to this day, the only budget agreement ever struck between the Conservative People’s Party and the Progress Party.
The agreement is still known, to this day, as the Rio Bravo Agreement.
