Flemish Member of Parliament for Open Vld Bart Tommelein will retire from national politics next year. He announced this on Friday in the Krant van West-Vlaanderen. The Ostend mayor wants to fully focus on his city.
Tommelein will be a Member of Parliament for twenty years next month. “Twenty years is a lot,” he told the Krant van West-Vlaanderen. “I have therefore decided for myself that it is enough. Next year I will stop. It is time for renewal.”
In concrete terms, Tommelein is no longer a candidate to make the West Flemish list. Whether he will support the list, for example as a list pusher, is not yet a foregone conclusion, he says, “but anyway I will not return to parliament. I will finish this legislature and then parliament will be a closed chapter.”
Tommelein now wants to fully focus on Ostend, where he has been wearing the sash since January 2019. “It’s no secret that I want another term as mayor,” he says. The liberals are therefore working on a local city list with Groen, CD&V and independents, he confirms.
Bart Tommelein drew the West Flemish list for the Flemish Parliament in 2019. The former Flemish minister and federal secretary of state obtained more than 35,000 preferential votes, with which he only had to let CD&V figurehead Hilde Crevits go ahead in the elections for the Flemish Parliament in the coastal province.
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