After 2.5 years full of political commitment and personal sacrifices, Eline Vedder from Ruinerwold says goodbye to The Hague. Not because her work is done, but because she no longer recognized herself as a Member of Parliament for the CDA. “I want to be able to remain myself. At some point I noticed: I am becoming someone I don’t want to be.”
The political career of Vedder (46) started in the municipality of De Wolden, continued in the Provincial Council and ended in the House of Representatives. “I was constantly being pulled. I decided during a May holiday to make the move to The Hague. I had three days to make that decision and hook my caravan behind my car, with everything I own in it,” she says in the Radio Drenthe program. Cassata.
Vedder now knows what that step to the Binnenhof means. Long days, high pressure, heavy files. “I often started at 9 a.m. and didn’t get home until around midnight. It’s not healthy work. If the occupational health and safety service had listened, they would have put us all on hold.”
Vedder was visibly and audibly involved in her files. Whether it concerned farmers’ interests, the Groningen dossier or children in Gaza. “I can be affected by things. And I am not afraid to show that. I sometimes get ugly reactions to that, but I also often hear: ‘Eline, you express what we feel but cannot say ourselves.’ I see that as a task of a representative.”
But it was her sensitivity that made her vulnerable in the tough arena in The Hague. “I increasingly got the feeling: maybe I am not tough enough for The Hague. But I also don’t want to turn into someone with an elephant’s skin. Because if only such people remain, what kind of politics are we left with?”
For a long time, Vedder stuck to one principle: especially when things start to chafe, you should stay put. “But at a certain point I started censoring myself in debates. Then I thought: who is watching? What are people going to say about this? And if that happens, if you no longer dare to say what you really think, then you have to give that seat to someone else.”
Her decision didn’t come without a physical toll, either. “Just before the cabinet fell, I was in hospital with double pneumonia. I was really exhausted. And I thought: this is to the detriment of myself, my children, my health. Then you have to stop.”
Despite everything, she has achieved results in the House of Representatives: “We have secured 70 million euros for young farmers. We have finally put the fate of so-called interim farmers, farmers without a permit due to failing regulations, on the map. They are now included in the law.”
Still, it was a tough fight. “I often had a different opinion than the cabinet. That was tough. But the standstill we are currently in is also for the sector killing. That is why I find it so hopeful that farmers, banks, LTO and youth organizations are now taking control themselves. That they say: then we will do it without The Hague.”
She is also saying goodbye to her life as a dairy farmer. “We are now at maybe fifty cows. At the peak there were 95. The cows are going out and caravans are probably coming in.” She laughs, but also says: “It’s actually not fun at all.”