Maastricht will definitely have a coalition of seven parties. Each also provides a councilor. This increases the number of aldermen from 6 to 7.
The new municipal council has three new faces and three new parties. New are Manon Fokke of the PvdA, Alex Meij of PVM and Johan Pas of D66.
Manon Fokke
Fokke was a councilor from 2006 to 2012. She was then a Member of Parliament from September 2012 to March 2017. She no longer ran for re-election because she wanted to return to local politics. From March 2018 she again became a councilor and party leader of the PvdA. She was the leader of her party in the elections in 2018 and recently in March. With Fokke as alderman, the PvdA returns to the coalition after 8 years of opposition.
Alex Meij
Alex Meij started his political career with the VVD. He was a member of the Citizens’ Committee for that party between 2006 and 2010. After that, he was a member of the municipal council for one period, of which three years as party chairman. He subsequently withdrew from local politics to make his comeback as a councilor for PVM in March 2018. But six months later he stopped because he became director of the Maasvallei housing association. So now he will be the first alderman ever for PVM.
Johan Pas
Johan Pas of D66 has been a citizen’s committee member since 2018 and a councilor and party chairman since April 2019. Pas was the party leader in the elections in March. He takes the place of Bert Jongen in the lecture for D66. Before the elections, he had already indicated that he did not want to be an alderman for another period because of the workload. Boy becomes councilor again.
Incumbent councilors
Aldermen who will remain in office are Frans Bastiaens of the Senior Party, John Aarts of the VVD, Niels Peeters of the CDA and Anita Bastiaans. Bastiaans became a non-party alderman in September 2020. In early April she became a member of Volt. That made it politically possible for her to stay on.
Also read: Coalition Maastricht: GroenLinks ‘shocked’ out, Volt in
Third new party
Volt is the third new party in the municipal council with PvdA and PVM. GroenLinks has disappeared from this. Frans Bastiaens has been an alderman since April 2021, Niels Peeters since January of this year. He succeeded Vivianne Heijnen when she became State Secretary. John Aarts is an absolute veteran in the Maastricht municipal council. With a break of more than four years, the liberal has been an alderman since 1998.
Also read: Maastricht gets an even bigger coalition with PVM added
stubborn dichotomy
Seniors Party, D66, CDA, PvdA, PVM, VVD and Volt also presented their coalition agreement on Tuesday. It has been given the title ‘Maastricht, city of connectedness’. The agreement notes that there is an increasingly persistent dichotomy in Maastricht. For example, between the original and new residents, between residents and passers-by, between neighborhoods, but certainly also between wealth and poverty.
countermovement
That is why the coalition wants to start a ‘countermovement’ in all kinds of areas. For example, people want to involve citizens much more in policy, communicate differently and opt for a more service-oriented service and management style. The coalition also says it wants to work more and more visibly per area.
Building student campuses
Maastricht wants to make the housing supply affordable, sustainable and diverse in the coming years, because ‘housing is a universal human right’, according to the agreement. In concrete terms, this means building student campuses, better quality social housing, more mid-range rent and starter and senior housing. The latter should promote traffic flow.
Other topics
The seven coalition parties will also increase the number of boas, also at night. They also want to continue the regional lobby for more police capacity. Solutions for the high water problem of the Meuse and its tributaries also occupy a prominent place in the programme. As well as reducing dependence on fossil energy.