ANP Mayor Femke Halsema during a meeting of the Amsterdam city council, during which, among other things, her new term of office will be voted on.
NOS Nieuws•woensdag, 17:43
Femke Halsema may remain mayor of Amsterdam for another six years. The Amsterdam city council decided this in a secret vote. It was already expected that Halsema would be allowed to stay on.
Halsema will now be recommended to the Minister of the Interior. The minister will then nominate her to the king, who will reappoint Halsema as mayor for a new six-year term.
First female mayor
Halsema, 57, became the first female mayor of Amsterdam in 2018. She succeeded acting mayor Jozias van Aartsen. Before that, Eberhard van der Laan was mayor of the capital for seven years.
Halsema started with a municipal council in which her party GroenLinks just, for the first time ever, had become the largest party. Her time as mayor started off turbulently. For example, she survived a vote of no confidence in 2020 after she did not allow the police to intervene at a Black Lives Matter protest during the first lockdown in the corona crisis.
“Amsterdam, as a idiosyncratic capital, is under a magnifying glass and decisions that you have to make in the blink of an eye can have major consequences for the lives of residents,” she said about her career as mayor in September. She said she has therefore had to train herself in “restraint” and “moderation”.
In recent years, Halsema has been committed to the Nieuw-West and Zuidoost districts, where there is more poverty than in the rest of the city. She also took steps to limit mass tourism to Amsterdam: for example, she advocated banning tourists from coffee shops.
She also often took a clear stand against anti-Semitism, racism and violence against LGBTI people and women.