Today the elections for the European Parliament begin. In this series you can read how green political youth parties from across Europe think about the future of the EU. Which topics are important to them, and how can young people make themselves heard? Today we speak to Julia Matser, chairwoman of DWARS. Connections with Brussels…
Tag: the Netherlands

Leonie, Tupperware consultant in The Netherlands
This story was translated from Dutch (original text below). ‘My job at Tupperware started as a joke. I was unemployed for a while and had just hosted a Tupperware party. My friend joked that I would be a good salesperson. First, I did not feel anything for it. I remembered such parties first and foremost…

A Day in the Life of a Dutch Green Campaign Manager
Today Marije Ploeg has the floor. She is campaign manager at the GroenLinks (GreenLeft) department in The Hague. Before, she was the campaign manager in Arnhem, and she has been in the United States for a while and joined the BKB-academy to follow intensive courses about campaigning. She will tell us what she has learned…

Hitting the campaign trail with DWARS
It all began at the largest GA in the history of the Dutch Greens: one inspiring day which energized me intensely. And so, I offered my services to an enthusiastic volunteer, so as to actively contribute to the party campaign. By Skip Anker, a DWARS-member campaigning for the first time My first goal: go to…

The Dutch Green Party campaign in the City of Leiden
At the start of this semester I decided to take a gap year due to certain circumstances. I wanted to spend my time by getting involved in the election campaign of the Dutch Green Party. In Leiden, the local campaigners were still looking for a second volunteering coordinator. I became coordinator on short notice, and…

The largest General Assembly in the history of the Dutch Greens
Over the past weekend, the annual General Assembly for the Dutch Green Party (‘GroenLinks’) took place in Utrecht (The Netherlands). Due to their new, immensely popular leader Jesse Klaver – as well as the general abysmal state of the world – the party has been growing for months. This causes unprecedented situations: 3000 attendees made…
DWARS update
Hi everybody, I am the new representative for European affairs of Dwars, the Dutch young greens. In this article I will describe what is happening in Dwars. First I will shortly explain how Dwars works, for those who have not heard of Dwars. Dwars has a national division and regional divisions. On local level people…
The Netherlands as viewed by an outsider on the inside
“A Dutchman is a lusty, fat, two-legged cheeseworm”. Not my words but those of a 17th Century English leafl et published about the Dutch. There must have been much talk about and writing about the Dutch given the relatively large amount of phrases in the English language that incorporate the word “Dutch”: Dutch gold, fake…
News from the Netherlands
A hot winter in the Netherlands: Politics can be great fun but it can be tough as well, as we learnt this December. For the first time ever (as far as I know), the Dutch green youth organisation DWARS was on the front page of a national Dutch newspaper, but we sure weren’t happy with…
News from the Netherlands
1) There has recently been a lot of commotion in the Netherlands about the activities of the Animal Liberation Front and related groups. Right-wing politicians see in their militant operations a reason for calling all activists for animal rights “terrorists”. Left-wing politicians fear their activities might be counterproductive. This evening (Monday the third of November)…