Thom van Campen (VVD) elected as new chairman of the House of Representatives

Thom van Campen was elected as the new chairman of the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening. With his election, the 35-year-old VVD member becomes the youngest Speaker of the House ever.

In addition to Van Campen, Martin Bosma (PVV) and Tom van der Lee (GroenLinks-PvdA) had also put themselves forward for election. Bosma had been chairman since December 2023 and wanted to continue in that role. Van der Lee had also stood as a candidate in the last presidential election in 2023, but then lost to Bosma.

This time too, Van der Lee failed. In the first two rounds, none of the three men won a majority. After Bosma and Van Campen had received the most votes in the second round (67 and 49 respectively), in the third round it was only between the PVV member and the VVD member. In that vote, Van Campen received 79 of the 148 votes; two MPs were absent. Bosma ultimately got stuck at 69 votes.

It is a custom that the House of Representatives, when it has a new composition after the parliamentary elections, also elects a new chairman itself. Only MPs can nominate themselves in this public application procedure. Their fellow MPs vote anonymously: one by one they hand in a note with the name of their preferred candidate.

Notes

Van Campen was born in Doetinchem and came to parliament after the 2021 House of Representatives elections. He was previously a municipal councilor in Zwolle. Since May this year, he has also been a member of the Chamber’s presidency, as second vice-chairman after Van der Lee.

In his application letter Van Campen wrote that he was “fond” of debate. According to the new Speaker of the House, a good debate is “not a competition for speaking time, but a search for clarity, difference and, if possible, agreement.” As chairman, he says he wants to ensure that the debate is conducted “with respect for each other” – “not with a raised finger, but with a steady hand and, where appropriate, with humor.”

In the debate prior to the vote, Van Campen added that as chairman he would hang up his “party political coat on the coat rack”, but that as far as he was concerned some statements were still “out of the question”.

As an example of an expression that crossed the border, Van Campen mentioned pinning on the National Socialist prince’s flag. PvdD MP Ines Kostic had previously asked Bosma whether he, as Speaker of the House, would intervene if an MP were wearing such a pin, but Bosma had not given an answer.

705 days

For Bosma himself, his presidency comes to an end after 705 days. The PVV member is therefore the second-shortest serving Speaker of the House since the Second World War. Only CDA member Piet Bukman was chairman for a shorter period, from December 1996 to May 1998.

It will be a disappointment for Bosma, who wanted to continue as chairman and had emphasized in his application that, after a tumultuous period, calm had returned to the official organization of the House of Representatives under him.

But although MPs from left to right were initially pleased with the way in which the former party ideologue of the PVV chaired the debates, they became disillusioned over time. For example, during the election campaign Bosma did not attach any consequences to the defamatory AI images that two PVV MPs had distributed on Facebook about GroenLinks-PvdA leader Frans Timmermans.

Bosma also did not allow Volt faction leader Laurens Dassen to describe the PVV as extreme right-wing, because Dassen would be making a Nazi comparison. D66 MP Jan Paternotte then reminded Bosma that he himself had used the term “extreme left” “constantly”.

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