2023-08-23 18:40:10
A short two-hour drive separates Brussels from The Hague. Frans Timmermans, heavyweight of the European executive, knows that he is not making the journey for nothing. Liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who announced on July 10 that he would be leaving politics after the general elections on November 22, will leave a big void behind him after thirteen years in power. And Frans Timmermans knows he is among the best placed to fill this gap.
Candidates for consent
The Social Democrat therefore formalized his resignation from the European Commission on Tuesday, August 23, of which he was vice-president in charge of the ambitious Green Deal, a vast arsenal of legislation against carbon emissions. The same day, he had just been elected leader of an alliance formed between his social-democratic family (PvdA) and the ecologists of GroenLinks. His name was widely federated: of the 38,000 members of the two parties who spoke, 92% supported his candidacy.
Frans Timmermans does not intend to stop there. At 62, a polyglot with a white beard, grandson of miners from a Catholic family, he calls on two other parties, the Socialist Party (SP) and the Animal Party to join the movement around a united left. “Of course, we have our differences, we could mark them more, but these fade if we compare them with those which oppose us to the right”he argued.
This rallying effort can make the difference, whereas the full proportional list ballot pushes, on the contrary, to an escalation of candidates. Collecting more than 62,000 votes is the guarantee of having one of the 150 seats in Parliament. Any center of interest that can reach this audience therefore has a chance of being represented.
Social without spending
In the last general elections of 2021, a new record had been broken: no less than thirteen emerging formations had joined the seventeen parties already present during the ballot. We found Jong, defending the cause of young people, NLBeter that of health personnel, Henk Krol that of pensioners, Nida that of the “Islamic Democracy”or even BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) that of farmers, the latter coming out on top in the provincial elections in March this year, but its leader Caroline van der Plas does not want to become prime minister.
Frans Timmermans promises to fight against child poverty, against the energy divide, all with the stated ambition of in-depth reform of the functioning of the State. “In recent years, the idea has spread that problems can be solved by injecting money into them. However, no structural problem has been solved”, he defended, citing the shortage of housing or the care of old age. At the same time, it undertakes to respect the commitment made within the framework of NATO to devote at least 2% of the GDP to military expenditure.
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