Erik van Merrienboer becomes temporary mayor in Roosendaal. The current mayor, Mark Buijs, had a serious accident while cycling at the end of last month. He suffered serious brain damage and it is not clear how long he will need to recover.
Van Merrienboer will start work in his hometown next Monday. He was appointed by the King’s Commissioner in North Brabant, Ina Adema.
Mayor Buijs was seriously injured two weeks ago in a one-vehicle bicycle accident in Scharendijke in Zeeland. He suffered serious head injuries and several broken bones. Buijs was urgently transferred to the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam.
In the meantime, things are slowly improving for the mayor. “The health situation shows a gradual, positive improvement. Mark is conscious and moves independently. But at the moment, every activity still requires a lot of energy from him. He remains under intensive medical treatment and observation,” the municipality wrote in a statement last Friday.
It is not clear how long the Mark Buijs restart will take.
Who is Erik Merrienboer
Van Merrienboer was mayor of Terneuzen in Zeeland until the end of last year. He resigned because the councilors did not want to issue a permit for the arrival of an asylum seeker center.
They did this at the insistence of the city council. Both the council and the council had previously approved the reception of two hundred asylum seekers and status holders. According to Van Merrienboer, the municipality would be violating the law by refusing a permit after approval. He spoke of an “almost unfeasible administrative split”.
Before Van Merrienboer became mayor of Terneuzen, he was a deputy in North Brabant and an alderman in Eindhoven. After the last municipal elections, he helped form a new coalition in Bergen op Zoom as an informant.
