Bij1 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Leader | Tofik Dibi |
| Founders | Sylvana Simons Ian van der Kooye |
| Founded | 24 December 2016 (2016-12-24) |
| Split from | Denk[1] |
| Youth wing | Radicaal |
| Membership(2023) | 5,276[2] |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Left-wing[12] tofar-left[15] |
| Colours | Yellow Black |
| House of Representatives | 0 / 150 |
| Municipalities | 2 / 8,237 |
| Party flag | |
 | |
| Website | |
| bij1.org | |
Bij1 (Dutch:[bɛiˈeːn]ⓘ,lit. 'together'), stylised asBIJ1, formerly known asArticle 1 (Dutch:Artikel 1), is apolitical party in theNetherlands. It is described associalist and is on theleft-wing of the political spectrum. It was founded in Amsterdam in 2016 bySylvana Simons, a politician who was formerly briefly connected to another party,Denk.[16][17][18] FormerGroenLinks politicianTofik Dibi has led the party since August 2025.[19]
In 2016, Sylvana Simons joinedDenk, a political movement founded by MPsTunahan Kuzu andSelçuk Öztürk after leaving theLabour Party following an internal dispute over the party's position onintegration.[20][21] In December of the same year, Simons left the movement as she was disappointed by the lack of support she received from the party during a period of intense death threats.[22] She also felt that Denk was becoming increasinglyconservative and losing interest in progressive causes such asLGBT rights.
Shortly after her departure fromDenk, Simons announced she had founded her own party with Denk's former campaign manager Ian van der Kooye, named Article 1. The name referred to the first article of theDutch constitution, which prohibitsdiscrimination based on race, religion, gender or any other reason.[23]
On 15 March 2017, Article 1 contested thegeneral election with Simons aslead candidate. Other prominent candidates were anthropologistGloria Wekker and formerSocialist Party senatorAnja Meulenbelt. The party failed to get enough endorsements in the provinces ofFriesland andDrenthe to get on the ballot.[24]
Article 1 received 28,700 votes (0.27%), failing to reach the 0.67%threshold to get a seat in theHouse of Representatives. Most of the party's support came from municipalities with a largeAfro-Dutch population, such asAmsterdam (2.5%),Almere (1.9%),Diemen (1.7%) andRotterdam (1.3%). The party also achieved an above average result in theCaribbean Netherlands (1.6%). The party scored negligibly in the more rural municipalities and cities with little or no immigrant population.
The party was sued by anti-discriminationthink tank Art.1 fortrademark infringement. The judge's verdict was in favor of Art.1, and therefore Simons was forced to change the name of the party.[25] On 29 October 2017, the new name was announced:Bij1.[26] It refers to the Dutch wordbijeen, which translates to "together".
In March 2018, the party only contested in themunicipal election inAmsterdam. Sylvana Simons was again elected as lead candidate. During the campaign, one of the party's candidates was accused of lying on her résumé, in which she wrongfully claimed to be apsychiatrist. Her candidacy was eventually withdrawn.[27]
Despite this incident, the party won 6,571 votes (1.9%), just enough to win a seat in the municipal council. The best results for Bij1 were inAmsterdam-Zuidoost, especially in theBijlmermeer, which is home to a largeSurinamese migrant population. In November 2018,Hilversum municipal councilor andDutch Socialist Party spokeswoman Rebekka Timmer switched to BIJ1 giving the party representation on the council for the first time. In June 2020, Timmer was elected to the party's executive board.[28][29]
In February 2020, the party announced that it would compete in the2021 general election.[30] The candidate list was approved by the general assembly in November 2020. Sylvana Simons was again selected as lead candidate, while poet andanti-racism activistQuinsy Gario was placed on the second spot.[31][32] The party was supported by prominentlijstduwers, such as academicGloria Wekker, actresses Anousha Nzume and Romana Vrede and former national spokeswoman for sex worker labor unionPROUD Yvette Luhrs.[33] The party achieved 0.84% of the vote share, securing a seat in the House for the first time.
In July 2021, Quinsy Gario was suspended from the party following behaviour allegations following an external investigation into signs of insecurity within the party.[34] He later cancelled his party membership which prompted the BIJ1's entire executive board inThe Hague to resign in protest.[35] In June 2022, the party's national chairwoman Jursica Mills left after claiming in a letter that BIJ1 had become a party of "toxicity, cronyism and contradictions." She was replaced by Rebekka Timmer.[36] In September 2022, relations between the party's leadership and the BIJ1 board of the Amsterdam faction became strained after the board accused B1J1's leadership of interfering in the selection of the a new faction leader following Jazie Veldhuyzen's decision to stand down from the role and trigger a leadership election and raised accusations of fraud within the party. The board of the Amsterdam branch all later resigned from BIJ1. At the same time, Gloria Wekker also accused the party of containing racism, misogyny andcancel culture within its ranks. Carla Kabamba was ultimately chosen as the party's Amsterdam faction leader in September but resigned at the end of the month and took her seat with her, causing BIJ1 to drop to two seats in the capital.[37][38]
In July 2023, BIJ1 party lost all Amsterdam councilors and board members after Jazie Veldhuyzen and Nilab Ahmadi quit the party, citing a "toxic climate" and internal power struggles within the party and stated Simons had also insufficiently supported them which Simons denied.[39][40]
After theNovember 2023 snap election was triggered following the collapse of thefourth Rutte cabinet, Simons announced on 24 July that she would not run for re-election and would stand down as lead candidate for the party citing health reasons, although her resignation also came with growing reports of instability within the party which had built up over the previous years. It was subsequently announcedEdson Olf would lead Bij1 into the election.[41] The party lost its seat in the House of Representatives. In December 2023, the party was forced to repay 127,000 euros in parliamentary subsidy payments after failing to provide necessary documents to the House finance committee to show the subsidies had been spent correctly.[42]
In November 2024, the party's two former Amsterdam councillors, Veldhuyzen and Ahmadi, announced the launch of a new left-wing political group, De Vonk (Dutch:The Spark).[43]
In January 2025, Georgine Panhuijsen, party leader and councillor inAlmere switched to theChristian Union (ChristenUnie) citing internal problems as her reason.[44]
Ahead of the2025 Dutch general election, formerGroenLinks member of parliamentTofik Dibi and editor-in-chief of theWiardi Beckman Foundation andDutch Labour Party member Patricia Dinkela put themselves forwards as candidates for party leader andlijsttrekker for the election. A third candidate Chanel Matil Lodik also stood but was excluded from the race, she then appealed her decision against the party's board claiming that after she had gone through the entire nomination process with the selection committee, the committee had not submitted her nomination to the board, which she believed was in conflict with the party's internal regulations. Dibi was nominated as leader, however the party did not secure enough votes for any candidate to be elected.[45][46][47]
According to the party, its two pillars are radical equality and economic justice.[48] The party supports theLGBT community, an end toethnic profiling, andintersectionality.[51] Because of the party's left-wing radicalism, it is often cited along withsocialist parties and movements.[3][4][52] Rebekka Timmer, member of the commission for the party program and number three on the list for the 2021 elections,[53] however, shows an indifferent view in regards to the term communism, but admits to drawing inspiration fromanti-capitalist thinkers, such asKarl Marx and has been described asMarxist.[54][4] Founder, Sylvana Simons opposes communism as it is envisioned byChina and theSoviet Union, calling itstate capitalism.[55]
The party has listed a core priority as ending various forms of discrimination, which the party has cited asracism,sexism,ableism,homophobia, andtransphobia. The party supports a generous refugee policy, particularly for those seeking asylum from discrimination, it calls for a ban on the characterZwarte Piet, supports makingKetikoti a national holiday in the Netherlands as well as Suriname, official apologies for slavery and Dutch colonialism and proposes abolishing the Dutch monarchy.[56] According to Simons, the party wants a fairer representation of female, immigrant and LGBTQ people in the government, public broadcast media and the workplace.[57]
In foreign policy, the party advocates the independence and recognition of theState of Palestine and theRepublic of South Maluku. It also calls for the Netherlands to end all support forIsrael. It also supports paying reparations to former Dutch colonies such as theDutch Caribbean,Suriname andIndonesia. The party also supports withdrawing the Netherlands fromNATO and is opposed to stationing nuclear weapons on Dutch soil.[58][59][60] Economically, the party calls for asingle-payer healthcare system, the closing of thegender wage gap and replacinggross domestic product with the concept ofgross national happiness as the dominant economic indicator.
In November 2021, the Amsterdam branch of Bij1 sparked controversy after releasing a preliminary copy of the party's election program which referred to theRemembrance of the Dead commemoration as "basically racist" and argued that the commemoration should include “memorials to victims of Dutch violence from South America and Asia and to resistance heroes from former Dutch colonies”. The program stated "as long as this remains the case, Amsterdam will not accommodate this commemoration."[61] The program statement was met with condemnation from other political parties and the Central Jewish Consultation who called it "a direct insult to the relatives of the more than 100,000 murdered Jews in the Netherlands, most of them from Amsterdam."[61]
BIJ1's electorate in the2021 Dutch general election was largely concentrated in urban areas, especially in neighborhoods with a high percentage of immigrants, particularly fromAfro-Dutch backgrounds. The party saw its best results inAmsterdam (5.8%),Diemen (4%),Almere (3.3%), andRotterdam (3.1%). It saw its largest share in theBijlmermeer area of Amsterdam. The party also polled above average inuniversity cities such asUtrecht (2.1%) andNijmegen (1.6%).[62]
| Election | Lead candidate | List | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Sylvana Simons | List | 28,700 | 0.27 | 0 / 150 | New | Extra-parliamentary |
| 2021 | List | 87,635 | 0.84 | 1 / 150 |  1 | Opposition | |
| 2023 | Edson Olf | List | 44,253 | 0.42 | 0 / 150 |  1 | Extra-parliamentary |
| 2025 | Tofik Dibi | List | 40,360 | 0.38 | 0 / 150 |  | Extra-parliamentary |
| Election | Municipality | Lead candidate | Votes | % | Seats | +/– |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Amsterdam | Sylvana Simons | 6,571 | 1.9 (#12) | 1 / 45 | New |
| 2022 | Almere | Georgine Panhuijsen | 3,225[63] | 5.0 (#9) | 2 / 45 | New |
| Amsterdam | Jazie Veldhuyzen | 21,441[64] | 6.8 (#5) | 3 / 45 [note 1] | 2 | |
| Delft | Jeanette Chedda[67] | 883[68] | 2.1 (#12) | 0 / 39 | New | |
| Rotterdam | Mieke Megawati Vlasblom[69] | 8,094[70] | 4.1 (#9) | 2 / 45 | New | |
| Utrecht | Stevie Nolten[71] | 5,403[72] | 3.4 (#11) | 1 / 45 | New |
{{cite web}}:|archive-date= requires|archive-url= (help);External link in|archive url=|archive url= ignored (|archive-url= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)Noem het communisme, wij noemen het rechtvaardigheid (...) Ik weet niet of het heel veel raakvlakken heeft – natuurlijk, we zijn geïnspireerd door antikapitalistische denkers. Wij vinden daar veel in, maar wij hebben echt een eigen ideologie, want het socialisme, als je wil, daar zei Karl Max natuurlijk al over: dat moet je afstemmen op de plaats en de locatie en de materiële omstandigheden van het hier en nu. Wij vinden het ook belangrijk dat we gewoon naar de samenleving kijken zoals die nu is en dan gaan kijken wat zijn de rechtvaardige oplossingen en niet per se de geschiedenisboeken erbij pakken om te kijken wat iemand anders ooit heeft gezegd.
(Call it communism, we call it justice (...) I don't know if it has a lot of similarities – of course, we've been inspired by anti-capitalist thinkers. We find a lot in it, but we really have our own ideology because socialism, if you will – Karl Marx has said about it: you need to adapt it to the place and the location and the material conditions of the current place and time. We think it's important to look at society as it exists now and then have a look at what the righteous solutions are and not to get the history books out to see what someone else has said in the past.)
As a majority female, immigrant and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) party led by a woman of Surinamese heritage, Artikel 1 has been adamant about fairer representation in governmental institutions and the workplace.