Partij voor de Dieren

Party for the animals
Party leader	Esther Ouwehand
Party leader	Ruud van der Velden
Group chairman, Second Chamber	Esther Ouwehand
Chairman of the First Chamber	Niko Koffeman
EP Head of Delegation	Anja Hazekamp
founding	October 28, 2002
Alignment	Animal welfare policy environmental protection policy
Colours)	green
Sit in the First Chamber	3/75
Sit in the second chamber	4/150
Seats in the European Parliament	1/29
Number of members	17,043 (January 1, 2019)
European party	Animal Politics EU
EP Group	GUE / NGL
www.partijvoordedieren.nl

The Partij voor de Dieren ( German  Party for the Animals ), PvdD for short , is a political party in the Netherlands . The PvdD was founded in October 2002. The organization, led for a long time by Marianne Thieme , currently has around 17,000 members. The party headquarters are in Amsterdam .

Political orientation

The main aim of the party is to enshrine animal rights in the Dutch constitution and, for example, to eliminate abuses in industrial animal husbandry or fisheries and to limit the possibilities for animal experiments. Critics complain that the party only has this one message. In fact, the election manifesto gives only vague indications of further points of view. The animal rights activists want to reverse the privatization of the energy companies and save company founders from taxes for three years. You advocate a more generous asylum policy. In the political spectrum of the Netherlands, the PvdD is more on the left. In the run-up to the formation of the government at the end of 2006, Marianne Thieme had declared her willingness to support a center-left coalition (at that time only theoretically conceivable) made up of the PvdA , Democrats 66 , GroenLinks , ChristenUnie and SP . While a new study shows that the positions of most Dutch parties have shifted to the right in recent years, this cannot be established for the PvdD.

The PvdD also supports demonstrations against factory farming under the motto we zijn het MEGA zat in Amsterdam. The demonstrations are based on similar events under the motto We're sick of it! in Germany.

Character of the party

The PvdD is a closed party in the sense that its member congresses do not meet in public. Thieme stated in an interview in 2010 that in the rush to found the company, she had received this recommendation from the first notary public; later the members would have wanted to keep the rule. She calls her party a getuigenispartij (for example: confessional party), which is why she puts so many questions in parliament. "We're not committed to reaching nine out of ten people, but rather to reach people who don't want to be nine out of those ten."

elections

The PvdD first took part in the election to the Second Chamber of the States General in January 2003 , but missed a seat with a share of 0.5% of the vote. In the 2004 European elections , it received 3.2% of the votes.

In the parliamentary elections in 2006 , the party reached the Second Chamber with 1.8% of the vote and two members (Marianne Thieme and Esther Ouwehand ), making it the first animal welfare party in the world to be represented in a national parliament. The writers Harry Mulisch and Maarten 't Hart supported the PvdD during the election campaign .

Former party leader Marianne Thieme

In the elections to the Provinciale Staten (provincial parliaments) on March 7, 2007, the PvdD was able to record another success with a nationwide result of 2.5% and had a total of nine members in the provincial parliaments. On the basis of this result, the PvdD has also been represented by a member in the First Chamber since May 31, 2007 . In the next elections on March 2, 2011, the party's share of the vote fell to 1.9% and two seats in the provincial parliaments were lost. However, the mandate in the First Chamber could be held.

In the 2009 European elections , the party again failed to make it into the EU Parliament, despite a slight increase to 3.5%.

In the local elections in March 2010, the PvdD ran in only six cities; in each of them (including Amsterdam and The Hague ) the party won one seat.

In the 2010 general election , the PvdD lost about a third of its 2006 voters, but was just able to defend its two seats. In the early parliamentary elections in September 2012 , the PvdD was able to keep both of its mandates (plus 0.6 percent).

In March 2014, the party doubled the number of its mandates in the local elections and now has one seat each in a dozen cities or municipalities. In the European elections in May 2014 , the PvdD won the European Parliament with 4.2 percent of the votes . Her MP, Anja Hazekamp , joined the Confederal Group of the European United Left .

In the elections to the provincial parliaments on March 18, 2015, the PvdD was able to increase the number of its seats from seven to 18 and was thus represented in ten of the twelve provinces with at least one mandate. As a result, the party had two MPs in the First Chamber since May 2015.

In the 2017 parliamentary election , the PvdD rose to 3.2% and thus gained three seats in parliament. However, in July 2019 she lost one of her five seats because the MP Femke Merel van Kooten-Arissen left the party.

In the local elections in March 2018, the party won 30 seats and currently has 35 seats in local councils.

Niko Koffeman

In the provincial elections on March 20, 2019 , the PvdD won 20 seats and is now represented in all provinces. As a result, the parliamentary group in the First Chamber grew to three members at the end of May 2019.

year	choice	Voting share	Seats
2003	Second chamber	0.5%	0
2004	European Parliament	3.2%	0
2006	Second chamber	1.8%	2
2009	European Parliament	3.5%	0
2010	Second chamber	1.3%	2
2012	Second chamber	1.9%	2
2014	European Parliament	4.2%	1
2017	Second chamber	3.2%	5
2019	European Parliament	4.0%	1

See also

• List of animal welfare parties

literature

• Nico Koffeman: Defending the weakest against the rights of the strong. The importance of the Partij voor de Dieren . In: Friso Wielenga, Carla van Baalen and Markus Wilp (eds.), A fragmented landscape. Contributions to the past and present of Dutch political parties , Amsterdam University Press 2018, pp. 35–56, ISBN 978-94-6298-849-1 . Open Access version

Web links

Commons : Partij voor de Dieren  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Partij voor de Dieren Official Website (Dutch)
• Party for the Animals International Version (German, English, etc.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ PvdD ledentallen per jaar (2007-). In: Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Politieke Partijen. University of Groningen , February 12, 2019, accessed on February 23, 2019 (Dutch). 
2. ↑ Markus Wilp: The political system of the Netherlands , Wiesbaden 2012, p. 316.
3. ↑ Message and reactions at Foknieuws.nl , accessed on September 16, 2012.
4. ↑ Tim Mäkelburg: Party shift to the right in the dossier parliamentary elections 2012 on NiederlandeNet , accessed on October 19, 2012.
5. ↑ PvdD, Kom naar de ´We zijn het MEGA zat´ manifestatie
6. ↑ Trouw: Het past niet bij mij om dingen op te leggen , accessed on September 16, 2012.
7. ↑ Wilp: The political system of the Netherlands , p. 315.
8. ↑ Partij voor de Dieren royeert Van Kooten vanwege 'zetelroof' , Algemeen Dagblad, July 16, 2019.