The Netherlands named outgoing Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra on Friday to replace Frans Timmermans as European Commissioner for the hotseat job as the bloc’s climate czar.
But the hawkish Hoekstra, who has ruffled feathers before in Brussels with comments over fiscal discipline, faced tough hearings before the Commission’s chief as well as the European Parliament.
“I think that we have a good candidate in (Wopke) Hoekstra,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said at his weekly press conference.
“What you need is somebody with international experience, who can negotiate and bring people together,” Rutte told journalists.
Hoekstra, 47, is a political veteran of the centre-right Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party, which has seen its fortunes flag under a coalition government led by Rutte’s business-friendly VVD party.
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He will now meet EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday to discuss taking over Timmermans’ position as climate commissioner, news reports said.
Hoekstra told local media he “will have a careful discussion with the President”, adding after that he would also have to convince the EU parliament of his candidacy.
Like von der Leyen, Hoekstra’s CDA is a member of the centre-right European People’s party.
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A former Shell employee and former partner at global consultancy giant McKinsey, Hoekstra was appointed as finance minister to serve in Rutte’s third coalition government in 2017, before becoming foreign minister in 2022.
Timmermans quit the Commission on Tuesday to return to The Hague where he planned to run for the job of prime minister in upcoming parliamentary polls.
The bearded Timmermans — seen as instrumental in driving the EU’s ambitious Green Deal pact towards carbon neutrality — was nominated as the top candidate to lead a powerful two-party left wing bloc to contest the elections scheduled for November 22.
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Hoekstra said he was “honoured” to be nominated for the job, adding it was difficult to leave the cabinet while the war in Ukraine was ongoing.
He is known as a staunch supporter of Kyiv and played an important role in pushing to get F-16 fighter jets to be sent to the war torn country.
In 2018 Hoekstra led a group of northern EU countries in the formation of the so-called “New Hanseatic League” comprising of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Sweden.
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The countries are trade friendly and fiscally conservative and aim for a more developed European single market, particularly within the services sector.
It was also during his tenure as finance head of the EU’s fifth-largest economy that Hoekstra raised the ire of southern EU members including Italy and Greece with his hawkish stance on fiscal discipline within the EU budget.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa in 2020 said a statement by Hoekstra that a number of countries should have saved more over recent years which would have allowed them to deal better with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was “repugnant.”
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Hoekstra also parried criticism around his track record when it came to climate issues, telling the ANP national news agency that “this is one of the big issues of our time.”
Reacting to Hoekstra’s nomination, the powerful left-wing Socialist and Democrats political group within the EU parliament said it preferred the EU climate job to remain in its hands after Timmermans’ departure.
“Wopke Hoekstra became known to the wider European public with controversial statements during the Covid-19 crisis,” the social democrats said in a statement.
“A Commissioner nominee does not make a Commissioner –- let alone get the support of the S&D Group by default,” it said.
“Mr Hoekstra can expect a tough EP hearing.”
