Politics in Netherlands

From agingresearch
Jump to navigation Jump to search

It has several advantages:
(a) no election threshold so with just ~70k votes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dutch_general_election#Results) (0.67%) we can get a member of Parliament
(b) no need to learn another language because of exceptionally high prevalence of English in Netherlands
(c) very compact country so it's easy to reach any city
(d) still quite large economics ($1trln GDP compared to f.e. $4trln in Germany) and nice biotech sector

Germany has high thresholds (5% for parliament elections and likely would have 3.5% for next EU elections) and large population, so we need ~2mln votes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_German_federal_election#Results) to get into Parliament, ~25-30 times as many (and costly) as for Netherlands.

How to register political party in Netherlands: [link (https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/democratie/vraag-en-antwoord/hoe-richt-ik-een-politieke-partij-op)].
"Anyone can start a political party. You do not need to have Dutch nationality for this and there is no age limit."
Another link (https://www.kiesraad.nl/verkiezingen/tweede-kamer/organiseren-verkiezing/oprichten-politieke-partij):
"A party that wants to participate in a House of Representatives election for the first time needs at least thirty declarations of support per constituency"
"The Netherlands has no preventive supervision of political parties. Only the judge can, at the request of the Public Prosecution Service, determine whether an association should be banned"
Another link (https://www.kiesraad.nl/verkiezingen/tweede-kamer/kandidaatstelling/waarborgsom-kandidaatstelling):
"The deposit for nomination for the House of Representatives is € 11,250."
"The deposit will be refunded if the party obtains at least 75% of the electoral quota"
According to Election law (https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0004627/2023-06-20/#AfdelingII_HoofdstukH_ArtikelH12), electoral quota seems to be 0.67% of votes, so € 11,250 is refunded if we get >0.5% votes.

In Netherlands we have 2-3 passionate activists and we also have people who signed DLD:
- Olivier Steen, University of Groningen, Medical student & PhD candidate [linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivier-steen-b9a565196/)]
- Yuri Engelhardt, University of Twente, Assistant Professor [linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuriengelhardt/)] (climate activist)
- Yani Langenberg, University of Amsterdam, MSc in Aging [linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yani-langenberg/)]
- Thomas Lenior, Leiden University, MSc in Aging [linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaswarnerlenior/?originalSubdomain=nl)]
- Eugene Berezikov from University of Groningen

Within Netherlands, the best city seems to be Hague, because Dutch Parliament is situated there and it is de-facto capital of Netherlands. There is a smaller city Leiden (120k population) in just ~10km from Hague, and Leiden has the largest biotech cluster in Netherlands (Leiden Bio Science Cluster) which ranks among top-5 science parks in Europe [wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiden_Bio_Science_Park)]. It's also good that one can get from Hague to Brussels via train in just ~120-150 minutes.

According to Political Parties Financing Act (https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0033004/2024-01-01), articles 7,8,etc — if party has 1000 members each paying at least 12 Euro/year, then it gets €280,352 subsidy per year, and moreover extra €85,739 per seat in Netherlands Parliament, but there are possibilities to get even much more funding. For example if political party has youth organisation (with 100 members from 14 to 27 years paying at least 5 Euro/year) than we can get a few thousand Euro more.

So for first 1k members it seems really good idea to pay 12 Euro/year, because state will give party additional 280 Euro per year for each of them. It's ~24x multiplier of donations.