Thick salt-and-pepper hair, three-day beard and dark circles under the eyes, this is the new face of the man who is about to lead the Netherlands. The former head of Dutch intelligence was sworn in on Tuesday, June 30, as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, at the head of a right-wing coalition government tasked with implementing the “strictest immigration policy ever seen” in the country.
More than seven months after far-right leader Geert Wilders’ resounding election victory surprised the country and the whole of Europe, Dick Schoof succeeds Mark Rutte, who has been in power since 2010. The latter has been appointed Secretary General of NATO. While he will be leaving his position as a senior civil servant in the Dutch Ministry of Justice, Dick Schoof has a long experience in national security jobs and headed the immigration service between 1999 and 2003.
“He was appointed National Counter-Terrorism Coordinator in 2013, overseeing the response to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine after it left Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport,” the British business daily recalls. The Financial Times.
And on the political side? A former member of the Labour Party – which he left in 2021 – this 67-year-old sportsman says he is non-party. Furthermore, he also has no political experience, which reflects for the New York Times “an attempt to govern the Netherlands differently after more than thirteen years under Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
“A chess player who anticipates”
Accustomed to marathons in his free time, he is determined to implement the policy of the coalition, led by leader Geert Wilders. The latter declared on Tuesday 30 June that Dick Schoof was “above political parties” and “very likeable”, while congratulating him on X. His mission: to form the government team, by the beginning of July according to local media. “He is absolutely not a politician. He is a real chess player who anticipates”, says Paul Abels, a former colleague from NCTV, on the television programme Nieuwsuur.
And if we rewind his life fast? Hendrikus Wilhelmus Maria “Dick” Schoof was born in 1957 into a Catholic family of seven children near Amsterdam. He studied urban and spatial planning at Radboud University in Nijmegen. He has a partner and two daughters from a previous marriage. Dick Schoof does not hesitate to “look for the limits” to achieve his goals, reports Newsletter.
“The Prime Minister of all Dutch people”
Although he was confined to Dutch intelligence, he is not unknown to the general public. Indeed, Dick Schoof attracted criticism when the leading daily NRC revealed in 2021 that NCTV had wiretapped politically active citizens using fake accounts.
The opposition DENK party, which represents a predominantly Muslim voter base, spoke out fiercely against his nomination on Tuesday, criticising his security-focused approach. “He has good experience on the right issues,” said Geert Wilders, while Dick Schoof said he wanted to be “the prime minister of all Dutch people”. “My plans for the Netherlands are those that the party leaders have agreed on,” he said, adding that he would not be kept “on a leash” by Geert Wilders.
“Schoof appears to be the ideal candidate to implement the coalition’s plans to [instaurer] ‘the strictest asylum policy to date’ and to combat organised crime,” analyses the English-language site NL Timestaken back by International mail.
For his part, the new Prime Minister “believes in a healthy relationship between the civil service and politics”, but he has always stressed that politics has the last word, writes the magazine. Elsevier Weekly. A civil servant “must guarantee his neutrality”, underlines the main person concerned in a long interview in March with the magazine The Green AmsterdammerAsked about controversial positions of some within the coalition, for example on asylum, he replies that “the rule of law and democracy are always subject to change”. And the Netherlands too.