He worked for politician Henk Kamp and as a cybersecurity expert at the Ministry of Defence before receiving a seat in the European Parliament as a result of Brexit in February 2020.
During the May 2019 European Parliament election,Groothuis was placed fourth on the VVD's party list.[8] He was also on the election program commission.[9] His party won four seats,and Groothuis himself received 21,353 preference votes,enough to meet the preference threshold.[10] However,Liesje Schreinemacher,who was fifth on the party list,rose one spot,because she had more votes,resulting in Groothuis not being elected.[11] When the United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020,the Netherlands received three of its seats. The Kiesraad decided to allocate these seats by treating them as restzetels (nl) from the last European Parliament election.[12] One of those seats went to Groothuis,who was installed on 11 February and left his job at the Defense Ministry. His term started retroactively on 1 February.[1][13][14] Within his party,Groothuis is the spokesperson for defense,technology,geopolitics,energy,industry,digitization,and cyber.[15]
When news publications including The New York Times reported in April 2020 that conclusions about Chinese disinformation had been toned down in a European report under Chinese pressure,Groothuis wrote a letter to Josep Borrell asking for an explanation. His letter was also signed by a number of other MEPs.[16] In addition,he said that he wanted the European Union to trace and sanction the people responsible for Chinese trolls and bots.[17] Groothuis was appointed the parliament's cybersecurity rapporteur to work on a revised NIS Directive,a set of cybersecurity regulations,called NIS2. The new directive was intended to expand the regulations to new sectors and to make it easier for countries and companies to share information about cybersecurity threats. Groothuis told that they can be reluctant to share threats because of the General Data Protection Regulation.[18] Besides,the NIS2 Directive includes fines for companies that do not protect themselves sufficiently against cyber attacks.[19] The directive was adopted by the European Parliament on 10 November 2022.[20]
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine,Groothuis called for more defense cooperation in Europe. He proposed to spend €200 billion of the European Union's (EU) COVID-19 pandemic fund on defense,and he was in favor of the establishment of a European Security Council,not connected to the EU,in the long term.[4] In March 2022,Groothuis was one of the lead authors,along with Bill Woodcock,Eva Kaili,Steve Crocker,Marina Kaljurand,Jeff Moss,Runa Sandvik,John Levine,Moez Chakchouk and some forty other members of the Internet governance and cybersecurity community,of an open letter entitled Multistakeholder Imposition of Internet Sanctions.[21] The letter outlines a set of principles governing the imposition of Internet-related sanctions,and describes the mechanism being built to operationalize the sanction mechanism. The letter was occasioned by a request from the UkrainianMinistry of Digital Transformation to ICANN and RIPE,requesting that Russia's top-level domains and IP addresses be revoked.[22] The letter advocates more effective sanctions,more narrowly-focused on military and propaganda targets,and avoiding collateral effects upon civilians.[23][24][25]
In early 2023,Groothuis was among a number of people and organizations that were sanctioned by the Iranian government for supporting and encouraging terrorism. This was in response to European sanctions against the regime following its crackdown of the Mahsa Amini protests. Groothuis had advocated designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.[26]
He was re-elected in June 2024 as the VVD's second candidate,when the party secured four seats.[27] His focus has since been on technology,cyber,defense,economic resilience,Iran,and the ASEAN countries.[28]
Committees and delegations
Delegation for relations with Iran (member since March 2020,vice-chair since July 2020)
Groothuis has voiced the opinion that European legislation surrounding digitization is lagging behind the innovations and that the European tech sector has fallen behind those of other parts of the world.[31] He opposes becoming technologically dependent on countries like China in a time when power is determined increasingly by technology. He has called for European investments to reverse course.[2][31] Groothuis also advocates a strong European defense to deter attacks,but he has opposed a European army.[2][32]
Personal life
Groothuis has been living in the South Holland town Voorburg since the late 2000s.[33][34] He has a wife,who he met in 2004,and two daughters.[31][35] In his youth,Groothuis played football at the local club VV Reutum.[2] He is a member of a local chapter of Lions Club.[36]
Christian Union–SGP is a collaboration between the Dutch political parties Christian Union (CU) and Reformed Political Party (SGP). In some municipal elections and Provincial Council elections, the parties submit a joint list. Before the merger of the Reformed Political Alliance (GPV) and the Reformatory Political Federation (RPF) into Christian Union in 2000, these parties also participated in various combinations, including SGP/RPF/GPV. From 1984 to 2019, the parties participated jointly in the European Parliament elections.
Antonius Jozef Maria "Toine" Manders is a Dutch lawyer and politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in the periods 1999–2014 and 2019–2024.
The Netherlands is a European Parliament constituency for elections in the European Union covering the member state of Netherlands. It is currently represented by 31 Members of the European Parliament. Until the 2009 European Parliament election, it excluded the Dutch in the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba.
Maria Renske "Marietje" Schaake is a Dutch politician who served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the Netherlands between 2009 and 2019. She is a member of Democrats 66, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party.
M.J.R.L. "Marcel" de Graaff is a Dutch politician. He was a member of the Senate of the Netherlands for the Party for Freedom (PVV) from 2011 to 2014. He served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Netherlands in the periods 2014–2019 and 2020–2024. He was co-president of the Europe of Nations and Freedom, and he switched party affiliation to Forum for Democracy in his second term.
An election of the Members of the European Parliament from the Netherlands was held on 23 May 2019. It was the ninth time such an election had been held in the Netherlands. The number of Dutch seats had been set to increase from 26 to 29 following Brexit, but due to the extension of the Article 50 process in the United Kingdom, the number of seats to be elected remained at 26.
The 2024 European Parliament election in the Netherlands was held on 6 June 2024 as part of the 2024 European Parliament election. It was the tenth time the elections have been held for the European elections in the Netherlands, and the first to take place after Brexit.
Martijn N. Bolkestein is a Dutch politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives between July 2020 and March 2021. He is a member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
Wybren Ridley van Haga is a Dutch politician and engineer who was a member of the House of Representatives between 2017 and 2023. He was initially elected as a member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), but was expelled from the party in 2019, causing the third Rutte cabinet to lose its parliamentary majority. Van Haga subsequently sat as an independent MP before joining Thierry Baudet's Forum for Democracy party, where he was placed second on the party list in the 2021 election. He has since quit Forum for Democracy and created his own political party Belang van Nederland.
Raoul Marc Boucke is a Surinamese-Dutch civil servant and politician, who has served as a member of the House of Representatives since 2021. He is a member of the social liberal party Democrats 66 (D66). Prior to his political career, Boucke worked for two government ministries, the European Commission, as well as the Dutch representation to the European Union.
Queeny-Aimée Magdalena Rajkowski is a Dutch politician, who has served as a member of the House of Representatives since the 2021 general election. There, she represents the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). She was also on the Utrecht municipal council in the years 2014–21.
Ruben Pieter Brekelmans is a Dutch politician serving as the minister of defence in the Schoof cabinet since 2024. Brekelmans previously served as a member of the House of Representatives on behalf of the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). As a parliamentarian, he focused on foreign affairs and migration.
M.J.A. "Thijs" Reuten is a Dutch politician of the Labour Party (PvdA). He began his career as a policy advisor of the party's parliamentary group in the House of Representatives and was a member of the Amsterdam municipal council in the years 2002–07. He then served for two terms as a district alderman in Amsterdam-Oost with a focus on housing and the economy. Starting in 2018, Reuten worked as an independent consultant and as head of policy at the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). He was appointed to the European Parliament in April 2021 after the resignation of Kati Piri, and he was re-elected in June 2024.
Anton Van Schijndel is a Dutch politician. He was a member of parliament in the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2006, initially for the VVD and later for One NL.
An election to the Dutch Senate was held on 30 May 2023. The 75 members of the Senate were elected by members of the provincial councils and electoral colleges elected two months earlier in provincial and electoral college elections.
↑ Groothuis, Bart; Woodcock, Bill; Kaljurand, Marina; Crocker, Steve; etal. (10 March 2022). "Multistakeholder Imposition of Internet Sanctions"(PDF). Packet Clearing House. Archived from the original on 10 March 2022. Retrieved 10 March 2022. We believe it is the responsibility of the global Internet governance community to weigh the costs and risks of sanctions against the moral imperatives that call us to action in defense of society, and we must address this governance problem now and in the future. We believe the time is right for the formation of a new, minimal, multistakeholder mechanism, similar in scale to NSP-Sec or Outages, which after due process and consensus would publish sanctioned IP addresses and domain names in the form of public data feeds in standard forms (BGP and RPZ), to be consumed by any organization that chooses to subscribe to the principles and their outcome.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Netherlands:
EU:
