Last weekend, Member of Parliament Corinne Ellemeet (GroenLinks) posted a long message on LinkedIn and Facebook. Frustrated, she had written her lines in twenty minutes during a train ride. Her colleague Ockje Tellegen (VVD) had announced her departure from the Chamber, the Chamber work was too heavy. Party chairman Esther Ouwehand (Party for the Animals) stops working for sixteen weeks because she is overloaded. It hit Ellemeet. She wrote: “So many colleagues have health problems. Sleep badly, experience a lot of stress, suffer from physical complaints. I also had moments when I wondered whether the work could be sustained due to neck and back pain.”
Ellemeet called her work environment “extremely unsafe”. “What really kicks in is not so much the hours, but the hatred, aggression, contempt and insults that you regularly receive. You are a plaything of public opinion and of social media. One minute you’re being mocked, the next you’re canonized.” Ellemeet now says: “It is really sad that people only become candid when they leave. I thought: let me be vulnerable.”
At the request of NRC four members of the House of Representatives talk about their profession on Wednesday evening. How it has changed, not only because of work pressure, but also because of the heated social debate. We are in a room in the hallway with the GroenLinks faction. In addition to Ellemeet (46) her colleagues Derk Boswijk (CDA, 33), Marieke Koekkoek (Volt, 33) and Kees van der Staaij (SGP, 54) will join us.
Ellemeet: “We work very hard, just like many Dutch people. You also make sacrifices, see your family less. That hatred on top is really the last straw. You give everything, you are often tired, and at the weekend or in the evening you get such a storm.”
Koekkoek: “In advance you hear people say: you must have a thick skin, this is part of the job. But the level of insults is really shocking. I’m not a punching bag. The curses in the Chamber, and sometimes outside it, sometimes make me think: maybe I should have stayed at my other job.” Koekkoek worked at a law firm before becoming a Member of Parliament in 2021. “That is sometimes hard, but at least you won’t be bothered by someone who thinks something of my hair. As a woman you also hear faster: you look angry, or you look so cute, oh girl. It also touches me when it affects colleagues. Like you, Derk, when you couldn’t go to a demonstration.”
Derk Boswijk is part of a coalition that wants to reduce nitrogen emissions. That means he gets a lot of “fierce” reactions. In June, he was advised by the NCTV not to go to a farmers’ protest in Stroe, because it may have been too unsafe. He went anyway. A month later, he stayed at home for a week, because one evening his family received an unwanted visitor at home. Boswijk: „Not going to Stroe was not an option. There was a part of my supporters, what am I worth if I don’t go? I did feel guilty towards Thom [van Campen, VVD] and Tjeerd [de Groot, D66], who received the same advice. In the end, the conversations there were really good. When I had to stay at home, there was support from the House, also for my family. When I wanted to return, I was often asked: are you sure?
There are colleagues from other groups, says Boswijk, who are causing unrest among farmers about the nitrogen dossier. “They say that the government is actually after farmers’ land. I always refer to them. Do you realize that what you say has an impact on my life? I’m in the supermarket explaining that there is no big conspiracy to drive the farmers off their land.”
Kees van der Staaij: „I used to be more active on Twitter. But I don’t feel like that anymore. Give me a real debate. People sometimes ask: aren’t you shocked by the reactions to a tweet? But I don’t follow that anymore.”
Ellemeet: “Sometimes it is very extreme, of the level that people want to do something to me. I find it hard to ignore.”
Van der Staaij: “That is true. We shouldn’t say that to each other. As if we should be above everything.”
Ellemeet: “I once appeared in a video that a colleague posted on social media, my words were completely taken out of context. There was so much hatred. Not only from trolls, but also from real people. Then that person retweeted it again. I found that very intense. Such moments are very lonely. I then confronted the colleague about it. I just wanted to get rid of it.”
Did that help, the MPs want to know. Ellemeet: “I do. I didn’t want to be above it, and say I don’t think it’s normal.”
Koekkoek: „Politics is not a game, but is sometimes seen as such by colleagues and the outside world. The trouble with idiotic movies is that they get a lot of attention, right down to the talk shows. I would like to get rid of that.”
Ellemeet: „I am really concerned about democracy. You want to keep the best people for politics. This scares people off. We have something to protect.”
Boswijk: „I often hear around me: we need more people from the business community in politics. That is sometimes said by the same people who saw politicians down to the ankles. That reflection is missing.”
Koekkoek: ,,When I first started, I thought: I’m going to be active on social media. I’m going to write all Twitter threads. Now I think: no. All the anger, the cynicism, you’re going to think that’s the world.”
trolls
The MPs regularly refer to Forum for Democracy, without always mentioning the party by name. Ellemeet: “I think it has really become more intense, especially because of their use of social media. I hear it from many colleagues. That sometimes it suddenly goes wild in Telegram groups, and that you get trolls en masse.”
Boswijk: “Sometimes there is a real structure behind it. Then you suddenly get thirty followers, six with approximately the same name and profile picture. Whether people are being paid for that, or whether a computer is doing it… at least it’s being orchestrated. And it wouldn’t surprise me if that also happens here from the House of Representatives.”
Marieke Koekkoek can hardly talk about her work with friends anymore, she says. “If I want to talk about a debate, like today about migration, the reaction is quickly: no, I don’t want to hear this at all. They turn away from politics, because they see politics as a fight that keeps on going. .”
Ellemeet: „We have to be more open about what we find difficult. People responded to my Facebook post with a tone of: what have you done, now you are not infallible anymore. The norm here among politicians is that things always go well. ‘Oh, no! I’m not bothered by anything!’”
Ellemeet, vice-chairman of the group, says that they talk about it a lot in the group. “Also about what a violent reaction from FVD does to you.”
Boswijk: “I get the most energy from being here in The Hague as little as possible.” The others laugh. “And I always have to cross a threshold when I walk into a full association building or a stable. Here we go again. But after a few minutes I still have a good conversation, and I can really tell you about the dilemmas I run into as a Member of Parliament.”
Koekkoek: „I am known as the invisible Member of Parliament. Journalists do make that accusation, and Volt members sometimes say it in a constructive way: ‘Speak up a bit more.’ That’s not a bad thing, but it does make me insecure. I experience a lot of pressure to become visible, but I don’t think the way it should be done here is okay. The standard thinking is: TV is good.” She takes great pleasure in her position as EU rapporteur. But: she also knows that she doesn’t make the news with that.
Several solutions are discussed during the discussion: a larger House of Representatives with, for example, 200 seats, more substantive policy officers. But, says Kees van der Staaij: “It is also important to look at what we do and don’t do. I remember the atmosphere was more relaxed, with more time for reflection, no meetings on Wednesday mornings and Thursday evenings. Parliament now has more tasks, but we must continue to ask ourselves: is that umpteenth round table discussion really necessary?”
Another solution: more conversations between MPs themselves, also outside their own group. Ellemeet: “After my Facebook message, I received a striking number of reactions from MPs from other parties.” Koekkoek also finds such a conversation useful. “There is a bit of the atmosphere of: you are safe in your own group, your competitors are outside it and you do not hang the dirty laundry outside.”
Ellemeet: “I do see a role for the President of the House to facilitate such a conversation.”
Van der Staaij: “In groups, for example.”
Koekkoek: “Yes, and not just the group chairmen who will be told: keep a close eye on your MPs. But just ordinary MPs among themselves, more from the bottom up. Then you really get more out of it.”
Workload
What the MPs like is that there is room in their groups for discussions about work pressure. Koekkoek: “I have two young children at home, I really don’t want to fall over because of work. It is very nice that I can also discuss this at the group, otherwise I would have left here quickly. A representative of the people must first and foremost be human.”
The SGP still discussed work pressure in the group on Wednesday morning, says Van der Staaij. “I sometimes say to a young colleague who lives in Elspeet: just go home in the evening instead of going to that debate.”
It’s the art of letting go, says Ellemeet. “You’re so busy that you can’t help everyone who emails you or has a good idea. That is a switch that you have to switch, mentally.” Boswijk has turned off the notifications on his phone. “When I helped with the evacuations from Afghanistan, half of Kabul eventually had my number, I couldn’t keep up with it. Since then I always have over 300 unread messages. I can’t answer everyone in time. When I accepted that, that really took the pressure off.” Koekkoek has removed the Twitter app from her private phone. “That gives me peace of mind, I see Twitter as work.”
What gives MPs satisfaction: occasionally responding more extensively to the many reactions.
Ellemeet: „I sometimes call a telephone number at the bottom of an e-mail. Then people are completely surprised and you have a very good conversation.”
Boswijk: „I received many unkind e-mails when I made a point of wearing military uniforms during demonstrations. Then I answered ten and checked every week whether people had responded. After a few weeks, three people had replied and they all wrote something like, “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t need coffee, but will think better next time.’ Then they turn out to be very ordinary people.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of October 22, 2022