BBB leader Caroline van der Plas left a parliamentary debate on agriculture and fisheries after an altercation with D66 parliamentarian Tjeerd de Groot (left), 8 February 2024 - Credit: Tweede Kamer / Tweede Kamer - License: All Rights Reserved

Friday, 9 February 2024 - 11:10

BBB leader to report D66 MP after latest clash prompted her to leave debate

BBB leader Caroline van der Plas will report D66 parliamentarian Tjeerd De Groot to the Tweede Kamer’s confidential counselor after their latest clash on Thursday evening, she said before entering Cabinet formation talks on Friday. On Thursday, she walked out of a parliamentary debate after an altercation with De Groot.

During the debate on agriculture and fisheries on Thursday evening, Van der Plas suddenly stood up, said it was an “unsafe working situation,” and left the debate. She said that De Groot made comments to her “In a very nasty way” out of the microphone’s range while another MP was speaking, NOS reports.

PVV parliamentarian Dion Graus, who was chairing the debate, tried to calm the situation. He said he didn’t hear the comments and apologized for being unable to intervene. He suggested that Van der Plas could sit on another chair, further away from De Groot. But that didn’t help. The BBB leader left, saying: “I don’t want to sit in the same room with him anymore.”

After Van der Plas had left the debate, De Groot said he was asking her why she always posted one-sided video clips of debates on social media, often targeting specific persons. Those videos sometimes feature him.

According to Van der Plas, De Groot elbowed her during the debate and “hissed” things at her. “I said I didn’t like that. It was not the first time, and Mr. De Groot knows that,” she said on Friday, according to AD.

De Groot posted on X that Van der Plas should maybe “take a day off and leave such a relatively unimportant debate to [her] agriculture spokesperson.” According to him, it was Van der Plas who created an unsafe work environment with her “one-sided videos” of debates. “I asked her why she makes those suggestive videos. The Kamer had agreed not to do that anymore because it affects us all. After a video like that, nasty emails and threats immediately flow in…”

Van der Plas and De Groot are known to clash in parliament due to their almost opposite positions on the future of agriculture and livestock farming. Both face threats because of their political views, according to NOS.