Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema secures City Council nomination for second term

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema secured approval from City Council, which will submit her nomination for a second six-year term. The Council voted in favor of her second term on Wednesday afternoon following a closed-door meeting.

Her nomination will be submitted to the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, currently led by Hugo de Jonge while the Cabinet is in a caretaker role. He can then decide to forward the nomination for reappointment to King Willem-Alexander, after first seeking advice from the King's Commissioner for Noord-Holland. Mayors in the Netherlands are formally appointed by the Crown.

Halsema became the city's first female mayor apart from Kajsa Ollongren and Guusje ter Horst, who each served for a few weeks in an interim capacity. Halsema was sworn in on July 6, 2018. Last September, the 57-year-old GroenLinks politician said she would consider it an honor "to be able to serve our beautiful city for another period."

Halsema said she was "moved" after the announcement that she has the Council's support. "Fantastic, grateful and impressive," she said in response. "Thank you for the trust you have in me. I will do my best not to betray it." Her first term is due to end on July 12. It is not yet clear which parties voted in favor of her second term, or if any council members voted against her nomination. Only the leader of the GroenLinks faction, Imane Nadif, said her party would support Halsema again, according to AT5.

Halsema, a criminologist by training, was a member of the Tweede Kamer between 1998 and 2010, and she served as party leader from 2002. She took over the job of mayor from VVD member Jozias van Aartsen, the former mayor of The Hague. He served as acting mayor following the death of Eberhard van der Laan.

In her first term as mayor, Halsema found herself in hot water a number of times. In 2019, when he was 15, her son was caught with a deactivated firearm that had been in the mayor's official residence. The boy's father and Halsema's partner at the time, Robert Oey, was convicted and sentenced to community service because of the firearm. Halsema and Oey split up less than two years later.

In 2020, Halsema was the target of a vote of no confidence because she had not intervened to clamp down on a Black Lives Matter demonstration that brought thousands of people to Dam Square during the coronavirus pandemic. The rally was held at a time when the official government stance called for keeping distance from others, even when outdoors. Halsema easily survived the vote.

From a policy standpoint, Halsema places a high level of emphasis on combating organized drug crime and the disturbances caused by it. She has also called for new approaches to combatting subversive crime, such as decriminalizing cocaine and investigating new approaches to cut off the profit earned by the illegal drug trade.

Halsema has also spearheaded divisive policies meant to make the old city center safer and more liveable. Her coalition with the city's aldermen pushed forward a marketing campaign telling British people to stay away from the city if they intend to treat it as a party destination, and she has advocated closing dozens of windows for sex workers in the Red Light District.

The mayor backs a plan to construct a new Erotic Center high-rise on Europaboulevard near the RAI convention center, far outside the city center. This despite the fact that the measure is strongly opposed by residents, businesses, schools and diplomatic missions in Amsterdam-Zuid, including the European Medicines Agency.