New parliament sworn in today with 68 newcomers; MPs younger, but less diverse

The new Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, will be installed in The Hague on Wednesday. The Kamer gets 68 new members, many of whom will join the faction of election winner PVV. NSC, which immediately gained 20 seats in the Kamer, also provides new MPs. The composition of the new Kamer is younger but less diverse.

Together with 13 returning MPs and 69 stayers, the newcomers will take their oaths today. Vice-president Roelien Kamminga (VVD) will be sworn in first so she can act as temporary president and swear in the other 149 MPs. They may say, “I declare and promise” or “So help me God Almighty,” in either Dutch or Frisian. The future representatives will promise to fulfill their duties “faithfully” and that they have not pledged any “gift or favor” to get their seat. They’ll also swear allegiance to the King, the Statute for the Kingdom, and the Constitution.

Of the 150 seats in the Tweede Kamer, 88 will be filled by men and 61 by women. After the 2021 parliamentary elections, 60 women won a seat. For the first time, a non-binary person will enter the Tweede Kamer, according to data from the Electoral Council.

Most MPs were born in the 1970s, with 51 of the representatives coming from this decade. However, a new crop of politicians is increasingly taking their place in the Kamer. Eighteen MPs were born in the 1990s. After the 2017 election, there was only one nineties baby in parliament. People from the fifties and sixties are starting to make way for the generation born in the nineties.

Almost half of the newly elected members in the Tweede Kamer live in Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland (47 percent). These two provinces are, therefore, overrepresented because approximately 38 percent of the Dutch population live there. Noord-Brabant (15 percent of MPs) and Gelderland (7 percent), the country's third and fourth most densely populated provinces, are underrepresented.

The Parliamentary Documentation Center concluded this month that the new Tweede Kamer has fewer people from ethnically diverse backgrounds. According to the organization, 12 parliamentarians are ethnically diverse, which amounts to 9 percent. After 2021, there were 21 (14 percent).