Wopke Hoekstra steps down as Foreign Minister to take EU job

Wopke Hoekstra has stepped down as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He submitted his resignation to King Willem-Alexander on Friday, he said on X, formerly Twitter. Hoekstra is a candidate to succeed Frans Timmermans as European Commissioner on Climate Policy and wants to take the coming period to prepare for the transition to Brussels, he said.

Hoekstra thanked his fellow Cabinet members and the officials at Foreign Affairs for the “good cooperation and all the hard work.”

He named Russia’s war in Ukraine as his most defining issue as Minister of Foreign Affairs. “We live in a world of great geopolitical tensions in which democracy is under severe pressure. This again shows the importance of a strong and decisive EU and NATO,” Hoekstra said.

Minister Liesje Schreinemacher (VVD) for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation will fill Hoekstra’s role as Minister for Foreign Affairs while the CDA appoints his replacement, according to NOS.

The Cabinet nominated Hoekstra to become the European Commissioner for Climate, a position recently vacated by Frans Timmermans to lead the GroenLinks-PvdA combination in the upcoming parliamentary election. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen supported the nomination, and the European Parliament will discuss it soon.

As of Friday, a petition against Hoekstra being put in charge of Europe’s climate policy has been signed over 35,600 times. The appeal calls on members of the Tweede Kamer to instead nominate a candidate “who takes the climate crisis seriously.”