Marijke van Beukering | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Mayor ofNieuwegein | |
| Assumed office 5 June 2023 | |
| Preceded by | Frans Backhuijs |
| Member of theHouse of Representatives | |
| In office 21 April 2021 – 1 June 2023 | |
| Preceded by | Sidney Smeets |
| Succeeded by | Hans Teunissen |
| In office 20 May 2020 – 30 March 2021 | |
| Preceded by | Monica den Boer |
| In office 22 January 2020 – 13 May 2020 | |
| Preceded by | Rens Raemakers |
| Succeeded by | Rens Raemakers |
| Alderwoman inIJsselstein | |
| In office 29 April 2010[1] – 21 September 2017 | |
| Member of theIJsselstein municipal council | |
| In office May 2006 – April 2010 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Maria Josefina Theresia Gabriëlle Huijbregts (1971-12-30)30 December 1971 (age 53) |
| Political party | Democrats 66 |
| Spouse | Sander van Beukering |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Schoevers European Secretarial Academy |
Maria Josefina Theresia Gabriëlle "Marijke"van Beukering-Huijbregts (born 30 December 1971) is a Dutch politician, who has served in theHouse of Representatives and who has been the Mayor ofNieuwegein since 2023. She is a member of thesocial-liberal partyDemocrats 66 (D66).
Before entering politics, she worked as a secretary in the Netherlands and abroad, and she later founded her own company. She became D66's sole member in theIJsselstein municipal council in 2006. When she was re-elected in 2010, Van Beukering became analderwoman. She resigned in 2017 because of problems with the municipality's cooperation withMontfoort, but was re-appointed shortly after. She stepped down once more in November 2017, and subsequently worked as an independent advisor, mostly for organizations in the public sector.
She filled the seat ofMPRens Raemakers, who was on sick leave, for four months in 2020. Seven days later, she replaced MPMonica den Boer to become a permanent member of the House. Van Beukering lost re-election in 2021 but succeeded MPSidney Smeets in April 2021. She became the Mayor ofNieuwegein two years later.
Van Beukering was born on 30 December 1971 inCuijk in north-eastNorth Brabant.[2] Her father was a school principal.[3] She attended the Merletcollege for her secondary education and received ahavo diploma. In 1989, she started a two-year training at theSchoevers European Secretarial Academy. Van Beukering has also done apostgraduate training in Public Leadership at theVrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2019.[2]
She started her career in 1991 as asecretary andarchivist at theMinistry of Foreign Affairs, working successively inThe Hague;Abidjan,Ivory Coast; andBrussels. In 1999, she got a new job as the assistant of the Head of Mission EU-Programme at the Customs and Fiscal Assistance Office in theBosnian capitalSarajevo.[2] She ended her foreign career of nine years in 2002, when she started working for asecondment agency.[4][5] She was on assignment as a secretary at Commit Arbo BV, anarbodienst, for one year.[2] She founded a secretarial services company called "SECONDIE" as itssole trader the following year.[2][6]
She became a member of themunicipal council of IJsselstein besides her job in May 2006, after her party had received one of the 23 seats during theelections.[7][5] In 2007 and 2008, she also served as director and joint owner of the secretarial services company Co-Support BV.[5]
Van Beukering was re-elected as the D66'slijsttrekker with 1,334 votes during theMarch 2010 municipal elections. Her party received three seats in total.[8] She becameAlderwoman of Society in IJsselstein in April 2010, when D66 became part of the newexecutive board.[9] Her portfolio included the project multifunctional sport facilities.[9][10] Because of her new position, she stopped her activities at her company and vacated her seat in the council.[2][9] During the2014 elections, she was again thelijsttrekker of her party, which received a plurality in the council of five seats.[11] She returned to the executive board as Alderwoman of People, a position with a portfolio highly similar to her previous one, with as special project "the customer at the center and deregulation".[12][13]
She stepped down on 8 February 2017 simultaneously with her colleague Vincent van den Berg (CDA) because it was revealed that a cooperation between the municipalities IJsselstein andMontfoort had cost €1.5 million more the year before than planned.[14] This resulted in the fall of the executive board. Van Beukering's departure was planned thirty days later. Both municipalities had started to merge theircivil services in 2014 in order to decrease spending on their bureaucracies, but problems had emerged resulting in a need for an estimated €1.7 million to resolve them.[15][16] Amotion of no confidence in the municipal council earlier had failed.[17] During the formation of a new executive board, thecoalition fell as well, as D66 wanted resigned alderpersons to return, while this was unacceptable to theVVD.[18] D66, being the largest party in IJsselstein, formed a new coalition just over two weeks after the fall of the board. Van Beukering returned as Alderwoman of Economic Affairs.[12]
Van Beukering appeared on place 24 on theparty list of D66 during the2017 Dutch general election. She received 4,971preferential votes, and her party won nineteen seats – not enough for Van Beukering to be elected to the House of Representatives.[19]
On 21 September 2017 she resigned from her position as alderwoman again together with two others.[20] A report had come out the month before that criticized the information the executive board had given to the municipal council about the cooperation with Montfoort.[21] This had resulted in the CDA leaving the coalition.[22] Van Beukering resigned after a number of parties with a majority in the council threatened with a motion of no confidence. In turn, the three resigning alderpersons declared that the council had become "sour" and was making it impossible for the executive board to govern.[20] D66 subsequently passed the opportunity to form a new executive board to the second biggest party.[23] Van Beukering was D66'slijstduwer in IJsselstein in the2018 and2022 municipal elections.[24][25]
After her terms as alderwoman, she worked as an independent advisor. As such, she has served as a project manager at theNetherlands Red Cross (2018), a member of thesupervisory board of social work provider Amfors Groep (2019–2020), a clean air coordinator for the regionIJmond employed by the municipalityVelsen (2019–2020), and a program manager at Breed Spectrum Aanbieders forchild protection inEemland (2019–2020).[2][4]
On 22 January 2020 Van Beukering became a temporary member of the House of Representatives, replacingRens Raemakers who was on sick leave due to anoccupational burnout.[26][27] She was the next person in line for a seat of D66 because of her place on the party list during the 2017 general election. Within the D66 caucus, she became the spokesperson in the areas of child protection,juvenile crime,child abuse, theParticipation Act, poverty and debt policy, andcaregivers.[28] She became part of the parliamentary Committees for Finances; Social Affairs and Employment; and Health, Welfare and Sport.[2]
Raemakers returned to the House on 13 May 2020, ending Van Beukering-Huijbregt's membership of the body.[29] However, a week later, D66 MPMonica den Boer left the House to take a job as professor.[30] Van Beukering succeeded her and thus became a permanent member of the lower house.[29] Her portfolio changed slightly: it now included security, but excluded juvenile issues.[28] She was member of the Committees for Justice and Security and for Social Affairs and Employment.[2]
She was the 25th candidate on the D66's party list in the2021 Dutch general election but lost her bid for re-election. Her party received 24 seats, and Van Beukering personally received 2,215 votes.[31] However, MPSidney Smeets resigned a few weeks after his installation, and Van Beukering filled the vacancy. She was installed on April 21.[32] Her focus was on the labor market,self-employment,AOW, pensions, income policy, leaves of absence, benefits, occupational disabilities, the intersection of labor and health care, and labor conditions, and she was on the Committees for Health, Welfare and Sport, for Kingdom Relations, for Public Expenditure, and for Social Affairs and Employment.[28][33] Van Beukering worked on a bill in early 2022 to increase the say participants have in how money is invested by their pension fund after theCouncil of State had advised on an earlier draft by D66. She took over that body's proposal to change the original bill's right of approval for participatants to a right of advise. She said that the bill could lead to moresocially responsible investing.[34]
After the Mayor ofNieuwegein – Frans Backhuijs – announced he would not seek a third term, Van Beukering was selected as his successor by the municipal council in April 2023.[3][35] Van Beukering left the House of Representatives on 1 June, and she was sworn in as Nieuwegein's first female mayor four days later.[36][37]
Besides her work as a politician, she served as the chair of the National Association First-Aid between May 2014 and June 2022.[38][39][40] She did a training to become a first-aid instructor at the Dutch Organization Teachers First-Aid in Tilburg in 2005.[2] Before being appointed chairwoman, she worked at the organization as its secretary (2004–2011) and subsequently as an advisor to theexecutive committee.[4][41] She has written a first-aid manual together with Nico Schouten calledEHBO Leren & Doen ("First aid learning & practicing"), that was published in 2012. A revised edition came out in 2016.[42] Besides, she was member of the supervisory board of the "Prins Hendrik Fonds", an organization that distributes first aid subsidies, from 2017 until 2020.[43][44]
Van Beukering is married to Sander van Beukering and has two daughters.[3][45] She is a resident ofIJsselstein, a town where she has lived since her return to the Netherlands from Sarajevo. She plays tennis and has been the chair of the tennis club IJTC Groenvliet since November 2017.[4][5]
 |
| Year | Body | Party | Pos. | Votes | Result | Ref. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party seats | Individual | |||||||
| 2021 | House of Representatives | Democrats 66 | 25 | 2,215 | 24 | Lost[a] | [47] | |
