Our message for Frans Timmermans

On 22 August, you were elected as the list leader of PvdA/GroenLinks, and since 8 September you have officially led the candidate list. As Young Socialists and DWARS members, we are extremely happy to see this, and we strongly support your list leadership.

You have ensured that the members of our youth party are optimistic about the future of politics in the Netherlands. With you as prime ministerial candidate, we have the prospect of a left-wing cabinet committed to a fair and green society.

As far as we are concerned, you are the personification of red-green cooperation. You are a connector with a strong social democratic background and you have achieved huge results in Europe in recent years with the Green Deal. By drawing attention to climate justice, you have realistically and successfully led the way to climate transition in Europe.

Your campaign message on the need to restore trust in each other and in government is absolutely right and perfectly in line with the vision of the Young Socialists and DWARS. Only then can we meet the great challenges of the future.

In short, as Young Socialists and DWARSs, we are going into the campaign for the Lower House elections with full energy, with you as our list leader.

We are, however, curious to know how you yourself enter the campaign and look at Dutch politics, especially when it comes to the following points.

- As a list leader, how will you ensure that young people feel substantively involved in the campaign and later in politics? The election manifesto states the Labour Party/GroenLinks wants to increase youth involvement. Within our association, we notice that young people feel they are not taken seriously by politics, despite being packed with good ideas about the future.

- Suppose you become prime minister, how do you plan to restore confidence among young people in the government? We fully support your message on the need to restore trust in politics. Even among young people, who have suffered from corona and are burdened with student debt in recent years, we see that trust in the government is under pressure.

- How do you plan to ensure that young people grow up in a society without inequality? For example, significant inequality of opportunity exists in the Netherlands, institutional racism persists, and our country ranks 28 globally.^e place in the Global Gender Gap Index, far behind Belgium and Germany, for example. To build trust in each other and in government, inequality is an important issue for young people, which needs to be changed and addressed in the campaign.

We will be very happy to discuss these issues with you to hear why young people should also vote for you in the elections.

Red-green salute,

Douwe de Lange (chairman JS Utrecht), Minne van der Mast (chairman DWARS Utrecht) and Rick Timmermans (chairman DWARS nationwide)