https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wopke_Hoekstra
Wopke Bastiaan Hoekstra (born 30 September 1975) is a Dutch politician serving as Minister of Finance in the Third Rutte cabinet since 26 October 2017. He is a member of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA)
Hoekstra is married and has four children. He is a member of the Remonstrant Brotherhood.
Hoekstra was born in Bennekom, Gelderland and studied law at Leiden University where he completed one year studying history. He was president of the fraternity Minerva. In 2000 he also studied law and international politics in Rome, and in 2005 he graduated with an MBA degree at INSEAD in Fontainebleau and Singapore.
Before he joined the government, Hoekstra was a partner with the consultancy firm McKinsey and chairman of the supervisory board of the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. Until 2006 he worked for Shell in Berlin, Hamburg and Rotterdam.
Hoekstra was the treasurer of the CDA-affiliated foundation Eduardo Freistichting and board member of the local CDA association in Amsterdam. In 2016 he was one of the lead architects of the party platform. In 2010, Hoekstra was offered a spot on the party's candidate list for the House of Representatives, but he did not accept it, preferring to continue working at McKinsey.
In December 2010, it was announced that Hoekstra was a candidate for the Senate election of 2011, for which he was indeed elected, and sworn in on 7 June 2011 as its youngest member.[4] Membership of the Senate is a part-time position, and therefore Hoekstra continued as consultant with McKinsey. On 6 December of the same year, he gave his maiden speech during the debate on a tax-related topic. In the Senate he was not reluctant to deviate from the party line on a number of ethical issues: he was the only CDA senator to vote in favour of a ban on civil servants refusing to marry same-sex couples (weigerambtenaar) and to vote in favour of legal status for lesbian parents (meemoederschap). He was reelected in 2015.
Hoekstra was nominated by the parliamentary press in 2013 as 'political talent of the year' and in 2016 he was the second youngest person in the De Volkskrant top-200 of influential Dutch people.
Hoekstra was appointed Minister of Finance in the third Rutte cabinet on 26 October 2017, succeeding Jeroen Dijsselbloem.
At his first meeting with other EU Ministers of Finance in Brussels in 2017, Hoekstra expressed scepticism about eurozone reform, saying that budgetary discipline in other eurozone states was necessary first. Hoekstra reiterated his reluctance on eurozone reform at a meeting of the financial council of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in 2018, warning against reforms initiated by Germany and France without the support of other member states or the public. Furthermore, at a visit to his German counterpart Olaf Scholz in March 2018, Hoekstra explained that he is reluctant about plans for a eurozone budget, a eurozone finance minister and a common deposit insurance scheme.[9] After Germany and France had outlined a series of eurozone reforms in June 2018, Hoekstra led a coalition of twelve other member states in opposition to such reforms, which would later be referred to as the New Hanseatic League. In January 2019, Hoekstra criticised the European Commission for its decision not to launch a disciplinary procedure against Italy over its deficit and debt, stating "It’s a missed opportunity to do the right thing for the long run", a concern later repeated by Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the World Economic Forum.
During his time in office, Hoekstra oversaw the government’s purchase of a stake in Air France KLM equal to that of the French government to increase its influence in the carrier’s business operations in 2019. That same year, led negotiations with the German government on the possibility of buying a stake in grid operator TenneT.
Since 2018, Hoekstra has been chairing a newly established, informal grouping of small northern and Baltic EU member states – Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands – to find common cause on the direction of eurozone reforms. Hoekstra has also expressed his opposition to an increase in the Netherlands' contribution to the EU budget as a result of Brexit. In 2019, Hoekstra joined forces with his counterparts of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Latvia in pushing for the establishment of new EU supervisory authority that would take over from states the oversight of money laundering at financial firms
After a tense meeting with fellow EU national leaders, during the COVID-19 crisis, Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa referred to Hoekstra's comments as "repugnant", saying that "this recurrent pettiness completely undermines what the spirit of the European Union is." He was the first European public authority to display criticism of other European countries regarding their performance on the pandemic response, singling out the Government of Spain and Italy specifically and actually blocking any kind of new response by the EU.
wopke hoekstra
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Minister Wopke Hoekstra grateful for children's health
https://www.tellerreport.com/life/2020-01-02---minister-wopke-hoekstra-grateful-for-children-s-health-.Hklv9vDiJ8.html
Wopke Hoekstra is happy that he can skate with his four children. The youngest son of the 44-year-old Minister of Finance was declared clean three years ago, after liver cancer was diagnosed in 2016.
"The flag is only allowed to go out after five years, and the controls are still not pleasant moments, but I have to say that he is doing great", says Hoekstra in an interview in Het Parool .
"What they did at the hospital is fantastic. When I was young, you just died a lot."
Although his family usually comes first, the Christmas holiday for the Hoekstra family started a day later this year: the minister first had to settle the allowance affair. "If necessary, I had transferred the money myself."
"These people have entered the door with their fingers in such an ugly way that I see it as a major and important task to do justice to them. In January they will be in places one, two and three."
EUROPE COMMITS TO €500 BILLION CORONAVIRUS SUPPORT PACKAGE; "SENSIBLE AND SOLIDARY", DUTCH FM SAYS
https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/10/europe-commits-eu500-billion-coronavirus-support-package-sensible-solidary-dutch-fm-says
After a failed marathon meeting of some 16 hours on Tuesday, the Eurogroup managed to come to an agreement to help the EU countries most affected by the coronavirus crisis. A total of some 500 billion euros will be made available for this. The agreement "was not without a struggle", Minister Wopke Hoekstra of Finance said to NU.nl, but he is satisfied with the package, calling it "sensible and solidary".
The European Finance Ministers agreed that countries can claim aid from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), an existing emergency fund with 410 billion euros at its disposal, as long as it is coronavirus related. If countries claim from the fund for other reasons, to help their economy for example, there will be strict conditions attached to the loan. The European Investment Bank will make favorable loans available for small and medium sized enterprises. And the green light was given for a European commission program to help companies retain their staff. All in all, the support package involves some 500 billion euros.
Hoekstra called the package sensible because, in his own words, "there is no mention of Eurobonds in any form". Eurobonds, or coronabonds as the are referred to currently, are joint European loans that the European Union member states as a whole guarantee. The Netherlands was firmly against these bonds from the start.
The package is also in solidarity because money is immediately available from the ESM for medical purposes and because there is agreement about other emergency packages, he said. "The loans from the emergency fund must be corona-related, we are not just going to finance the healthcare of other countries," Hoekstra said.
Italy, Spain and Portugal previously accused the Netherlands of showing a lack of solidarity. Italy, the EU country hit hardest by the coronavirus so far, in particular pushed for coronabonds and unconditional use of the emergency fund.
According to Hoekstra, he made some 50 or 60 phone calls with his fellow Ministers after the failed marathon meeting on Tuesday. They discussed the use of the ESM in particular - a sticking point at Tuesday's meeting. "Some countries think that if there is enough pressure, things will start to move. We can talk about everything. We are in solidarity. But if countries want to invest money from the emergency fund in their economy in addition to the corona crisis, then there are conditions," Hoekstra said to the newspaper.
In its joint announcement, the Eurogroup called the emergency package a European Recovery Fund - an instrument to deal with future crises. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire described it as a form of joint debt. Italy and Spain spoke of common funding. But according to Hoekstra, this is definitely not coronabonds. "A meaningless phrase is distilled from the statement. The word 'eurobonds' is not in the text."