CDA Member of Parliament Eline Vedder may make the switch to the House of Representatives. The farmer’s wife from Ruinerwold is number 23 on the list of the CDA. She is therefore the first successor, after the departure earlier this week of two CDA MPs, including Agnes Mulder from Assen.
Eline Vedder (44) cannot immediately say ‘yes’ to the question whether she will actually sit in the House of Representatives. She has to arrange everything at home on the farm first. Vedder had not expected the demand to come at such short notice.
After Mulder’s announced departure, this week also saw the departure of CDA MP Jaco Geurts, who will become acting mayor. “Normally you can prepare for it, if you know that you are a succeeding MP. But that two MPs suddenly leave in one week, nobody saw that coming. So it takes me by surprise. My husband and I do run a dairy farm with 75 cows, and we have two children. I can’t just drop everything out of my hands.”
She will accept the request, she says. Because the switch to politics in The Hague certainly appeals to her. But she wants to settle things on the home front first. “I cannot just leave two children to the fate. My husband must therefore be partly exempted from the company.”
Vedder campaigned vigorously in Drenthe in the 2021 parliamentary elections as a CDA candidate. She did this together with the other Drenthe candidate Agnes Mulder, who was in 8th place. Mulder did return to the House of Representatives. But she announced at the beginning of this week that she will become director of employers’ organization VNO-NCW MKB Noord as of 1 June. She has been in the House of Representatives for more than ten years.
Eline Vedder, known as an action farmer, turned out to be a voter for the CDA. With 9377 preferential votes, she turned out to be seventh in the list of voters for her party. Sitting CDA Member of Parliament Agnes Mulder received fewer votes, 5736 votes.
Vedder needed about 17,500 votes to enter the House of Representatives on his own. She was proud at the time that she had attracted so many votes. “Unfortunately not enough for a seat, but more than enough for confidence in the future,” she said.
Vedder has just started her second period as a Member of Parliament for the CDA. In 2019 she entered the Drents Parliament through preferential votes. Now she was in 3rd place on the list, also just the number of seats that the CDA won in the past elections. Before that, Eline Vedder was a member of the municipal council of De Wolden for a short time. She is also a board member of LTO Dairy Farming.