Stientje van Veldhoven-van der Meer (born 22 June 1973) is a Dutch politician serving as Minister for the Environment and Housing in the

Third Rutte cabinet The third Rutte cabinet was the cabinet of the Netherlands from 26 October 2017 until 10 January 2022 (since 15 January 2021 demissionary). It was formed by a coalition government of the political parties People's Party for Freedom and Democracy ...

since 2019. A member of the

Democrats 66 Democrats 66 (; abbreviated D66, ) is a social liberal political party in the Netherlands, which positions itself in the centre of the political spectrum. It is a member of the Liberal International (LI) and the Alliance of Liberals and Demo ...

(D66) party, she served as State Secretary for Infrastructure and Water Management from 2017 to 2019.

Career

A diplomat and civil servant by occupation, Van Veldhoven studied

policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an orga ...

and

management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activitie ...

in international organisations at the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; nl, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, abbreviated as RUG) is a public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. Founded in 1614, the university is th ...

. She worked at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy and for the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

in Brussels. She was elected political talent of the year 2012/2013 by the Dutch national radio and television broadcaster,

Nederlandse Omroep Stichting The Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (; NOS ; English: Dutch Broadcasting Foundation) is one of the broadcasting organisations making up the Netherlands Public Broadcasting system. It has a special statutory obligation to make news and sports progra ...

(NOS). She was elected to the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

from 17 June 2010 until her appointment as State Secretary for Infrastructure and Water Management. As a parliamentarian, she focused on matters of

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of ...

natural environment The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses t ...

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...

fishery Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life; or more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place ( a.k.a. fishing ground). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish farms, ...

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the s ...

and

development aid Development aid is a type of foreign/international/overseas aid given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental, social, and political development of developing countries. Closely-related concepts include: develop ...

. In 2019, she was appointed minister without portfolio at the

Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations ( nl, link=no, Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties; BZK) is the Netherlands' ministry responsible for domestic policy, civil service, public administration, elections, loca ...

References

*
Parlement.com biography

External links

*
House of Representatives biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Veldhoven, Stientje Van 1973 births Living people Democrats 66 politicians Dutch civil servants Dutch women civil servants Dutch women diplomats 21st-century Dutch diplomats Members of the House of Representatives (Netherlands) State Secretaries for Infrastructure of the Netherlands Women government ministers of the Netherlands Politicians from Utrecht (city) University of Groningen alumni 21st-century Dutch politicians 21st-century Dutch women politicians