It is “a bit inevitable,” says Fleur Agema, that a PVV member also leads the Council of Ministers once

The daughter of Fleur Agema had “walking at school on Friday morning,” says PVV-Vice prime minister Agema Friday afternoon. But from herself, Agema says, it didn’t have to be as necessary: ​​the weekly Council of Ministers Leiden instead of Prime Minister Dick Schoof, who is in bed with the flu. And then also do the weekly press conference, in Nieuwspoort. She hopes, she says, that he can do his own work again next week. And she of her, as Minister of Health.

PVV people are used to avoid journalists, they almost never appear on TV. For Agema, who became a member of the PVV in 2006, it is the first time that she is live opposite a room full of journalists. She smiles a lot and looks relaxed, although in the beginning she always wipes her hands dry on her pants. She seems to have intended not to take any risk: she reads as much as possible the answers for those Schoofs officials have prepared and printed. And so looks a lot down.

There are almost no questions she does not know an answer to. They are about care a few times and so she sometimes forgets that she is there as a Deputy Prime Minister, not as Minister of Health. She is on behalf of the entire cabinet. In her ministry, she says, there is nothing left to get if money is needed. There is one time when she is talking about ‘my cabinet’.

Partyless prime minister

It would never have been Schoof’s intention that he had to be replaced. Already at the very first meeting of his cabinet, in July last year, he had made it clear to the ministers and state secretaries that he always wanted to be there on Friday. If he had a European top meeting in Brussels on Friday, or something else abroad, the Council of Ministers would be moved to the following Monday. As Prime Minister, Schoof wanted to have experienced every decision and every discussion about a decision itself without his own party.

His predecessor Mark Rutte always had the other VVD people at the table that he trusted through and through, he knew they would not let anything happen that was detrimental to him. And what he had missed, he later heard from them. Dick Schoof has to make do with his officials, who never participated in the table.

Agema reads as much as possible the answers for those Schoofs officials have prepared. And she looks down a lot

That Fleur Agema replaces is because her party is the largest government party. Only if she was also prevented, is VVD Vice-Prime Minister Sophie Hermans’ turn, then Eddy van Hijum from NSC, and as the very last Mona Keijzer from BBB.

Fleur Agema is not Schoof’s greatest confidant in the cabinet, according to those involved he seeks much more support from Sophie Hermans and Mona Keijzer.

Already in the first debate in which the entire cabinet was opposite the House of Representatives, about the government statement just before the summer, it went wrong between Agema and Schoof. Agema had tweeted during the debate about an old statement by Femke Halsema about headscarves, and it was just said that the cabinet was there for all Dutch people. The debate was stopped and in a room shoved against Agema, she had to cry.

In the press conference on Friday, she calls the conflict of the time ‘an accident’. “It did not stand between us.” She always calls “Dick.”

Shiver

People who know Dick (67) well say that he is almost never sick. Last Sunday he spent hours in the cold at the commemoration of the Holocaust in Amsterdam, it was also obvious how cold parliamentary chairman Martin Bosma of the PVV was at that meeting. The next day, Schoof was at the commemoration in Auschwitz, together with the king. On Tuesday he met with a groups of ministers in the so -called undercarriers, in preparation for the Council of Ministers on Friday. The special ministerial committee that is about nitrogen received that Tuesday a presentation from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

In the evening he was a guest at the society of editor -in -chief. Then he didn’t feel completely well, on Wednesday morning he was sick. And not only he. The State Secretary for Finance Tjebbe van Oostenbruggen (NSC) was also sick, later in the week also Minister of the Interior Judith Uitermark (NSC).

‘Proud’

On Friday afternoon, in the press conference, Fleur Agema says that her party leader Geert Wilders was ‘proud’ because she would lead the Council of Ministers. He said that to her. And whether she is proud? Or does it feel “like a victory”? Agema looks down again, but there is no answer to that question. She says: “Well, the PVV has been more than the largest party for a while, so I think it is a bit inevitable that at some point there is also someone from the PVV here.”

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