The FVD did not succeed in Belgium, but Volt did: under the leadership of ex-D66 MEP Sophie in 't Veld, Volt has collected signatures and enough support from politicians from other parties in recent months to be able to participate in the elections in Flanders in June for the European Parliament. Volt will also participate in the Belgian parliamentary elections, national and regional, for the first time.
Sophie in 't Veld, a Member of the European Parliament for twenty years, has been a member of the European party Volt since last spring and had wanted to participate in the European elections on behalf of Volt in the Netherlands. She had been a member for too short a time to stand as a candidate for party leadership and the board of Volt in the Netherlands did not want to make an exception for her. That list is now headed by Reinier van Lanschot, who announced last week that Volt is turning the party leadership on behalf of the Netherlands into a duo, meaning that the number two, Anna Strolenberg, has also become party leader.
Door to door
In 't Veld, who was elected party leader in Belgium after the rejection in the Netherlands, tried in recent months to collect five thousand signatures in Flanders and among Dutch-speaking voters in Brussels, demanding to be able to participate, but that turned out not to be feasible : there were about three thousand. According to Volt, this is due to a technical failure of the government site where the signatories had to report. Volt has filed a complaint about this and is considering filing a lawsuit.
Another way to be eligible was to gather the support of five Belgian MPs from other parties. She ultimately succeeded, according to Volt, mainly because she had already managed to collect many signatures with her door-to-door campaign and via social media.
'Polls are polls'
Laurens Dassen, party leader of Volt in the Netherlands, calls the news about Volt Belgium's participation “a fantastic milestone.” The participation of Volt Belgium could mean bad news for other Flemish parties: Sophie in 't Veld could be a threat in the elections, especially for the Flemish liberal party OpenVLD, which has not been doing well in polls for some time. To obtain a seat in the European Parliament on behalf of the Dutch speakers in Belgium, a party needs at least 7 percent of the Flemish votes.
In 't Veld says that she will do everything in the next two months “to mobilize the progressive, democratic forces.” “Everyone now blindly assumes that the far right will achieve a major victory in June, but polls are polls.”
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