Who on the Chamber’s website the overview with all Members of the House of Representatives – name, age, seniority – you will see that the five longest-serving Members of Parliament since the last elections are from the same party: the PVV.
With the reference date of December 21, this is the result: Geert Wilders (62) has been there since 1998: he has been a Member of Parliament for 9,917 days. Martin Bosma (61), Raymond de Roon (73), Tony van Dijck (62) and Dion Graus (58) have been there since 2006: they have been MPs for 6,962 days. (Esther Ouwehand, PvdD, is also from 2006, but she dropped out several times for long periods.)
The difference with most political leaders is immense. In 1998, when Wilders made his debut, Wim Kok (PvdA) was Prime Minister and Dilan Yesilgöz was 21 years old. In 2006, when the four other PVV stalwarts took office, Jan Peter Balkenende (CDA) was Prime Minister and Rob Jetten was 19.
And so the leaders of the largest opposition faction now belong to the group they have always opposed: the (political) elite. In PVV language: the pocket fillers, the job hunters, the plush stickers.
A popularized interpretation of classic criticism of political parties introduced at the beginning of the last century by political scientist Moisei Ostrogorski (1902) and sociologist Robert Michels (1911). They foresee the risk that parties become mechanisms for dividing power and functions among themselves.
In Parliament, the PVV claims that it sees through this. The SP has been involved in this for a long time. Distrust of leaders is becoming part of the political culture.
2025 is a breakthrough in this regard. The politicization of public life extends to talk shows where impartial experts are replaced by former politicians. Former prominent figures – a Henk Kamp, a Ferd Grapperhaus, a Diederik Samsom – who almost always appear to share the preferences of their party.
Even the PVV is participating. Former minister Fleur Agema, PVV deputy prime minister in the Schoof cabinet, is also a regular guest. The same Agema who, as a Member of Parliament – I have just plowed through the archive – in 2009 attacks and attacks “the cronyism and pocket-filling (..) of prominent PvdA members” in corporations in 2020 “pocket-filling administrators” in healthcare.
Old farts
It illustrates the ambiguous status that the pickpocket will acquire in 2025. As a novice reporter from The Hague, I live in the Schilderswijk in the 1980s, where my landlord is sure that the “high lords” at the Binnenhof are only in it for the money. Koot and Bie sing about in 1989 – ‘Old farts must go’ – the ‘grey farts who fill their pockets’.
This idea never went away. Just last weekend, Mayor Sjors Fröhlich of Vijheerenlanden shared a message on social media from a citizen who accuses “pocket filler” Fröhlich of wanting to receive “fake refugees”.
But when I went through the archive I thought: fascinating that all these anti-political concepts have been around for so long while, also for the PVV, they often mean something different than people might think.
Initially, the PVV’s aggression against ‘the pickpockets’ resembles an impotent attempt to make contact. Swearing for attention.
This is how Raymond de Roon sails in 2008 against UN diplomat and former minister Eveline Herfkens (Development Cooperation, PvdA). With the approval of the Foreign Office but in violation of UN rules, she received 280,000 euros from the state for a flat in New York. “An old PvdA minister who fills her own pockets by fighting poverty.”
But later Hero Brinkman, then PVV treasurer, discovered that the same De Roon as his predecessor spent very high amounts on a new employee. Brinkman reports it to Wilders, but he looks away, Brinkman said in 2012 NRC, “although everyone knew this was wrong.”
Martin Bosma also knows how to hit the ‘pockets’ hard at times. In 2014 he lashes out at corporations, educational institutions and the public broadcaster: “There are people who have really left all norms and values behind them.”
Later he takes the cultural sector under fire. In 2015 he sees “permanent pocket-filling” at the ANC, “the sister party of the PvdA”.
He himself will become Speaker of the House in December 2023 and will remain so until last month. As of July 2024 his annual salary is 182,000 euros. As an ordinary Member of Parliament, that is now more than 140,000 euros.
Outside his own faction, Wilders continues the fight fanatically. He sees pickpockets in 2010 among bankers, in 2012 at the PvdA, he sees them year after year in the EU, he unmasks Mark Rutte in 2020 during corona: “The people in the first three scales, the caregivers and helpers, earn less than €20,000 per year. You earn eight to nine times as much.”
And when he’s in the campaign from 2023 also criticizes the European redundancy pay of Frans Timmermans (GL-PvdA), this contributes to the PVV’s monster victory: 37 seats. That victory also ensures that Wilders’ own annual salary in 2024 regulatory rises to 157,000 euros. (The loss in the October elections drops it to about 152,000 euros.)
Indigestible
In the meantime, research is catching up 2018 (EenVandaag),2024 (RTL News) and 2025 (NOS) that PVV MPs under Wilders’ leadership perform less than those of other factions. They are relatively often absent. In 2023-2025 there will even be a PVV member who will never succeed in taking the floor in the national meeting room.
“I couldn’t stomach that,” Caroline van der Plas told NOS. “And that he earns 144,000 euros every year.” So who the real pickpockets are – it is not always so clear.
PVV politician Reinette Klever is particularly special. As a Member of Parliament (2012-2017), she puts herself on display in 2013 deep aversion to healthcare fraud. In 2014 she demands, before the Benefits Affair breaks out, that benefit fraud is tackled harshly. The system is “one big cheese with holes in it” with which “criminal Bulgarians (..) fill their pockets and get away with it.”
She is fairer to herself. As director/business director of Ongehoord Nederland (2022-2024), she will receive an annual salary of 140,000 euros, “tens of thousands of euros” more than previously promised by the broadcaster, reveals NRC in 2024.
Then Wilders is not on fire. In the Chamber say he said that Klever’s broadcasting salary was low by Hilversum standards, “although it is a large amount.”
After Klever took office as PVV Minister for Aid and Trade in the summer of 2024, it turned out that her daughter joined Ongehoord Nederland when Klever was business director. Small scribbles. The daughter will also take over some of Klever’s duties at the broadcaster when she joins the cabinet. confirms Turn in Fidelity.
Former PVV minister Marjolein Faber.
Photo Joost Rutten
The straight-talking Marjolein Faber is comparably friendly to the family. She is a PVV senator and Gelderland Member of Parliament from 2011 to 2024, and rents her son’s company to manage the Gelderland PVV website. Wilders will nevertheless make her Minister of Asylum and Migration in 2024.
The PVV has also campaigned for years against ‘job hunting’ by others. De Roon sneers in 2009 that the division of European functions is an “important pastime for the CDA, VVD and PvdA elite.” Financial spokesperson Tony van Dijck (PVV) mentions Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem (PvdA) in 2014 “the man with many hats, a real job hunter”.
And until Faber and Klever resign with their PVV colleagues in the summer of 2025, they both have right on an annual salary of 206,000 euros.
10,000 days
Then there is the biggest excess for the PVV: the plush sticker. MPs who in 2013 do nothing against benefit fraud: “plush stickers,” says Van Dijck. Senators who in 2022 do not want to vote out Rutte IV: “plush lickers and plush stickers,” says Faber.
Wilders himself emphasizes at every opportunity: he is different. After he in 2012 Rutte I drops: “I thought keeping my word to the PVV voters was more important than the plush.” After he this summer the Schoof cabinet says: “I am not a stickler. I am not going to sit because of power.”
However, he will remain in Parliament for quite a long time: within three months, on March 14, 2026, the PVV leader will mark his 10,000th day as a Member of Parliament.
So who are the real pocket-fillers, job hunters and money-makers here? In retrospect, after all the petty scribbling in PVV circles, with five PVV boomers who have penetrated the political elite, you can also pin that blame on the PVV itself.
And, perhaps, on the professional media. In the archive I found a fantastic fragment from 2010. It happens in the House during a hearing about the IPCC, the UN panel on climate change. Utrecht professor Wim Turkenburg (science, technology and society) is “surprised” by the language of MPs.
Former MP Kees Vendrik (GroenLinks), now chairman of the national climate platform, offers the professor “a healing word”.
“It happens to all of us that we are called pickpockets and liars,” he says. “It is generally not meant in a bad way. It is mainly intended to get into the media and that seems to work.”
The journalistic principles of NRC