It’s official: D66 member Fleur Gräper will be the new mayor of Tilburg. The Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) announced this on Friday. Gräper will be sworn in at the Tilburg City Hall on January 21.
After the municipal council nominated Gräper to the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in October, she was screened. “This means that the AIVD will investigate the person in question and that a tax investigation will take place,” the Dutch Association of Mayors explains.
Gräper successfully got through this, which means she will become mayor of the city in January.
Career
Gräper was (outgoing) State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science in 2024. Before that, she was deputy for the province of Groningen for eight years and in that role, among other things, vice-chairman of the IPO (Interprovincial Consultation). She was previously general secretary of the Social Economic Council (SER) Northern Netherlands.
In addition, Gräper now holds a number of additional positions, including as chairman of the national program committee of D66. Gräper studied history at the University of Groningen. She is married, 50 years old and the mother of two student children.
She currently lives in Groningen, but she will move to Tilburg after her installation.
Leak in application procedure
A total of seventeen people were in the running for the position, nine men and eight women. Theo Weterings’ successor was actually going to be announced on October 30. The announcement was only brought forward a week after the name of one of the applicants became known to the Brabants Dagblad.
The leaked candidate turned out to be Esmah Lahlah. After the leak, she confirmed to the newspaper that she had officially put herself forward as a candidate for mayor of Tilburg. This while she was in second place on the GroenLinks-PvdA candidate list in the House of Representatives elections.
The province and the municipality of Tilburg have filed a report after the leak surrounding the appointment of the new mayor.