Caspar Veldkamp | |
Office: | Minister of Foreign Affairs |
Term Start: | 2 July 2024 |
Primeminister: | Dick Schoof |
Predecessor: | Hanke Bruins Slot |
Office1: | Member of the House of Representatives |
Term Start1: | 6 December 2023 |
Term End1: | 2 July 2024 |
Successor1: | Annemarie Heite |
Office2: | Ambassador of the Netherlands to Greece |
Term Start2: | 2015 |
Term End2: | 2019 |
Office3: | Ambassador of the Netherlands to Israel |
Term Start3: | 2011 |
Term End3: | 2015 |
Birth Name: | Caspar Cornelis Johannes Veldkamp |
Birth Date: | 23 April 1964 |
Birth Place: | Etten-Leur, Netherlands |
Party: | New Social Contract (2023–present) |
Otherparty: | Christian Democratic Appeal (formerly) |
Spouse: | Anne Veldkamp |
Children: | 4 |
Residence: | The Hague, Netherlands |
Alma Mater: | Erasmus University Rotterdam Leiden University |
Caspar Cornelis Johannes Veldkamp (born 23 April 1964) is a Dutch politician and former diplomat currently serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Schoof cabinet. Veldkamp previously served as a member of the House of Representatives for the New Social Contract party from December 2023 to July 2024.[1]
Veldkamp started working as a policy officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993.[2] He later had postings in Warsaw, Washington, DC, Brussels, and London, and he served as Ambassador of the Netherlands to Israel (2011–2015) and to Greece (2015–2019).[3] In the latter role, he cooperated with Minister of Finance and Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem on the Greek government-debt crisis. His last diplomatic position was as a member of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's board of directors.
Veldkamp was a long-time member of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) before he joined New Social Contract (NSC) to participate in the 2023 general election.[4] During the campaign, Veldkamp said to be critical of the "transfer of powers" towards the European Union (EU). He presented the newly-founded party he joined as an "optimistic party for the dissatisfied citizen".[5] He was elected to the House of Representatives, where his focus as a parliamentarian was on foreign affairs and migration.[6]
After the PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB formed the Schoof cabinet, Veldkamp was sworn in as Minister of Foreign Affairs on 2 July 2024, succeeding Hanke Bruins Slot.[7] [8] In his first days, he attended the 2024 NATO Summit in Washington, D.C., where he met with Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz. Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push for the EU to declare Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization.[9] When the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November 2024, Veldkamp said that the warrant would be respected if Netanyahu were to visit the Netherlands. An intended trip to Israel by Veldkamp was postponed the same day, after his plans, kept secret for security reasons, had been leaked.[10] [11]
The cabinet reversed the commitment of its predecessor, made following the 2021 Taliban offensive, to allow Afghan guards of the Dutch embassy and Task Force Uruzgan to relocate to the Netherlands.[12]
Body | Party | Votes | Result | . | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party seats | Individual | |||||||||||
2023 | House of Representatives | New Social Contract | style=text-align:right | 4 | style=text-align:right | 2,386 | style=text-align:right | 20 | [13] |