Omtzigt was born in The Hague, Netherlands in 1974, as one of twins. His father Jan Omtzigt (1939-2019) was a civil servant at the Dutch state telecommunications company PTT and later director of a Roman Catholic retirement house in Zenderen.[5] When he was four years old, Omtzigt moved with his parents and brothers from Wassenaar to Borne.[6] He attended the gymnasium school in Hengelo.
In parliament, Omtzigt currently serves on the Committees on European Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Housing and Kingdom Services, Social Affairs and Employment, Finance and Public Expenditure. From 2017, he served as the parliament's rapporteur on Brexit.[9]
From 2019, Omtzigt, together with Member of Parliament Renske Leijten (SP), stood up for affected parents in the childcare benefits scandal in which more than 20,000 families were wronged when applying for childcare allowance. In the end, civil servants and (former) ministers were heard by the parliamentary questioning committee on Childcare Allowance, which ultimately led to the fall of the third Rutte cabinet in January 2021.
In July 2020, Omtzigt was defeated by Deputy Prime MinisterHugo de Jonge in a vote for the position of leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal. Omtzigt was re-elected in the 2021 general election, winning 342,472 preference votes, more than any other non-party leader.[10] Following the election, Omtzigt took time off, after complaining of exhaustion.[11] Despite his leave, he decided to attend his installation on 31 March 2021.[12]
On 25 March 2021, confidential notes from the government formation were revealed to include, among other things, "position Omtzigt, function elsewhere" (Dutch: "positie Omtzigt, functie elders").[13] This prompted a heated debate in parliament and an impasse in the government formation.[14] Amid the continuous news, Omtzigt took a formal leave of absence of four months starting on 25 May. He was temporarily replaced as a member of parliament by Henri Bontenbal.[15]
New Social Contract
On 10 June 2021 a 78-page memo by Omtzigt was leaked, addressed to the CDA's Spies-committee that analysed the results of the parliamentary elections of March 2021. Omtzigt lashed out hard at the CDA, group employees and CDA members of parliament who were not named and wrote that he was promised the leadership of the party if Hugo de Jonge would withdraw as party leader. After De Jonge's departure, however, the party leadership was offered to Wopke Hoekstra. According to Omtzigt, that was completely beyond his control. According to Omtzigt, political party members and members of the House of Representatives have described him as a "psychopath, sick man, rabid dog, jerk, disturbed" and "unstable". Some of those claims were added to the memo by Omtzigt in a WhatsApp screenshot. Two days later, Omtzigt announced that he had left the CDA, and that he would continue as an independent member of parliament after his leave of absence.[16] On 15 September 2021, Omtzigt returned to the Dutch House of Representatives as a member of a one-person parliamentary group under the name Member Omtzigt. In an interview with De Twentsche Courant Tubantia a week earlier, Omtzigt had indicated that he ruled out a return to the CDA.[17]
On 20 August 2023, Omtzigt announced his participation in the early Dutch parliamentary elections scheduled for 22 November 2023, with the party New Social Contract (NSC).[18] The party entered the House as the fourth largest with twenty seats, and Omtzigt expressed his unwillingness to negotiate about forming a governing coalition with the right-wing populist Party for Freedom (PVV), the election winner, as he believed the party did not respect the rule of law. As part of the cabinet formation, Omtzigt entered talks under informateurRonald Plasterk with the PVV, VVD, and BBB to address those concerns.[19] He finally left open the possibility to enter into an extraparliamentary cabinet, but he stepped out of the negotiations in February 2024, citing disagreements about finances.[19][20] Omtzigt rejoined talks under a new informateur, and a coalition agreement to form the Schoof cabinet was reached on 16 May 2024.[19] In the House of Representatives, Omtzigt has served as parliamentary leader and as spokesperson for European affairs.[21]
In September 2024, ahead of debates on the 2025 Netherlands budget, he announced that he would take a step back for a few weeks for health reasons. De Telegraaf had reported weeks before that Omtzigt had cried and screamed during talks between coalition parties and the cabinet.[22] According to an EenVandaag poll, 48% of NSC voters did not want Omtzigt to returns as parliamentary leader. While supporters appreciated his ethics and expertise on issues, they expressed concerns about his decision-making and ability to negotiate deals.[23]
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Omtzigt in 2006
In addition to his role in parliament, Omtzigt has been serving as member of the Dutch delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) since 2004. He is currently a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights; the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee); the Sub-Committee on Human Rights; the Sub-Committee on the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights; and the Sub-Committee on the Rights of Minorities.
In his capacity at the Parliamentary Assembly, Omtzigt has served as the Assembly's rapporteur on mass surveillance since 2014.[24] He has also been the Parliamentary Assembly's General Rapporteur on the protection of whistleblowers since 2021.[25]
Omtzigt has also served as rapporteur on the case of the car bombing of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia (2018),[26] justice for the victims of ISIL (2019);[27] and on Poland (2019).[28] Between 2016 and 2017, he prepared the Assembly's proposal on an Investment Court System (ICS) for arbitrating in commercial disputes between states and foreign investors.[29]
Political positions
Omtzigt was long seen as representative of the CDA's Eurosceptic wing. He has been critical of European Central Bank policies and, in 2020, pushed his party to support the idea of the Netherlands opting-out of unwanted EU programs.[30] During the campaign for the 2023 Dutch general election, Omtzigt positioned himself as a centrist: conservative on immigration and climate change but leftist on reducing poverty and improving healthcare.[31] At EW's 2024 HJ Schoo speech, Omtzigt advocated for a social market economy, arguing that the role of the national government should be enlarged. He believed the government should be less constrained by the EU, and he called for a revision of the tax system to favor large corporations less. In the same speech, Omtzigt drew attention to low birth rates in the Netherlands and other European countries. He suggested this might require more labor migration from outside of Europe, and he said that "its geopolitical implications [would be] difficult to underestimate."[32][33]
In 2017, media in the Netherlands described how fake news reports of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash were propagated with the support of Omtzigt who introduced a Russian man as an "eyewitness" of the crash on a public expert debate in May 2017. The man, who was an asylum-seeker from Ukraine, never witnessed the crash, and his speech, texted to him by Omtzigt prior to the interview, repeated one of the Russia-promoted versions of Mig jets downing the Boeing. Shortly thereafter, journalists determined that the man had not been at home on the night of the crash and he had already been interviewed by officials who had discounted him as a witness.[35][36][37] He acknowledged via Twitter that he had acted carelessly and a few days later resigned as the spokesperson for the MH17 file.
Omtzigt, Pieter; Tozman, Markus K.; Tyndall, Andrea (2012). The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey and of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery. LIT Verlag Münster. ISBN978-3-643-90268-9
Notes
^ abOmtzigt was appointed to the body later during the term due to a vacancy.
^Omtzigt received enough preference votes to be elected despite his party's result.
^"Uitslag Tweede Kamerverkiezing 2010" [Results 2010 general election] (PDF). Dutch Electoral Council (in Dutch). 16 June 2010. pp. 14–15. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
^"Uitslag Tweede Kamerverkiezing 2012" [Results 2012 general election] (PDF). Dutch Electoral Council (in Dutch). 17 September 2012. pp. 64–65, 150. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
^"Proces-verbaal verkiezingsuitslag Tweede Kamer 2021" [Report of the election results House of Representatives 2021] (PDF). Dutch Electoral Council (in Dutch). 29 March 2021. pp. 22–60, 162. Retrieved 21 December 2023.
Underline signifies the parliamentary leader (first mentioned) and the Speaker Angle brackets signify a replacement member or a member who prematurely left this House of Representatives
