International

The SP Senate group today elected Rik Janssen as its new group chairman. Janssen has been a member of the Senate for the SP since 2019. Before that he worked as a deputy in the province of South Holland on behalf of the SP from 2011 to 2019. In 2011 he was a member of the Lower House, where he had been a staff member since 2007. 

Janssen takes over from Tiny Kox who has chaired the fraction for 19 years. On Monday, Kox was elected as President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, but he will remain a member of the group.

In recent years, Janssen was the group' s spokesperson for Infrastructure, Water Management & Environment and Justice & Security. During the corona crisis, he campaigned for the decisive say of the Senate and the Lower House in emergency legislation, he waged a political battle against mink breeding in the Netherlands, and he campaigned for better legal tenability of the Nitrogen Act.