City Council crash course

Writer: Annika van den Brink

The following blog is (for now) in Dutch. However, in the Netherlands it is also possible for most international residents to vote in the municipal elections. Voting for you municipality is really important, since the decisions they make have an impact on the place where you live, and maybe also study or work. For more information on whether you are allowed to vote, and more general information about the elections, you can visit these websites: link, and link.

It will not have escaped the notice of most: the 2022 municipal elections are coming up. But while we do regularly catch up with national politics, local politics remains somewhat in the background. What are they all actually doing there? And why is it important to vote 16 March? In this blog post, I will give a crash course in local government.

Dutch municipalities could be thought of as a kind of the Netherlands on a small scale. Within a municipality, the national government is then called the College of Mayor and Aldermen. You could compare the mayor to the prime minister, and the aldermen to ministers. The college of mayors and aldermen is the day-to-day administration of a municipality. Each member of the college has their own duties, and everyone together is ultimately responsible for each member's policies. The rest of the councillors are called the municipal council. So this is what you could compare to the coalition. The municipal council controls the college of mayors and aldermen. That is how it is divided in most municipalities. Within the municipalities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, however, there is another distinction: district committees. These commissions, in turn, could be seen as small-scale municipal councils, in which the city is again divided into districts.

There are a number of seats to be distributed within the municipal council, depending on how large a municipality is. How these seats are distributed is determined by the municipal elections, which are held every four years. Most national, major parties also participate in municipal elections. For instance, currently the three largest parties in the Amsterdam city council are GroenLinks, D66 and the VVD. In addition, local parties often take part in the elections. OK, now we know how the city council works. But why is it important to vote?

The main reason why you really should vote is because the municipal council makes decisions that directly affect your life. Direct decisions are made about your hometown, which might also be your school, study or workplace. This makes the municipal council perhaps even more important than the national government for your daily life. The local council also has a much shorter line of communication with the residents of its municipality than national politics has. If there is something in your municipality or neighbourhood that you know of ideas or improvements for, the municipal council is always open to them. Approaching a councillor is very easy by sending them an e-mail to their e-mail address which you can (for Amsterdam) here can find.

In short, the municipal council does important work for your municipality and your neighbourhood, which is why it is important to go and vote 16 March. Besides voting, you can of course actively help the campaign. We too are organising various activities and actions to campaign for GroenLinks, which you too can contribute to, if you like. Keep an eye on our website and socials for that!

Sources:

https://www.amsterdam.nl/bestuur-en-organisatie/gemeenteraad/