Tinne Van der Straeten | |
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![]() Van der Straeten in 2024 | |
Minister of Energy | |
In office 1 October 2020 –3 February 2025 | |
Monarch | Philippe |
Prime Minister | Alexander De Croo |
Preceded by | Marie-Christine Marghem |
Succeeded by | Mathieu Bihet |
Member of the Chamber of Representatives | |
In office 20 June 2019 –1 October 2020 | |
Constituency | Brussels |
In office 28 June 2007 –7 May 2010 | |
Constituency | Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde |
Personal details | |
Born | Malle,Belgium | 1 April 1978
Political party | Groen |
Residence(s) | Koekelberg,Belgium |
Alma mater | Ghent University Vrije Universiteit Brussel |
Occupation |
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Website | Official website |
Tinne Van der Straeten (born 1 April 1978) is a Belgian politician who served as Minister of Energy in the De Croo Government from October 2020 until February 2025. She is a member of the Groen party. She previously served in the Chamber of Representatives for Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde from 2007 to 2010 and later for Brussels from 2019 until 2020, when she resigned to become energy minister.
In 2000, Van der Straeten obtained a degree in African Studies at Ghent University. Subsequently, she started working as a researcher at Université catholique de Louvain. After this, she went to KU Leuven, where she researched labour discrimination. After her studies, she joined Agalev and she was active in Malle. In 2008, she obtained a law degree at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
In the 2007 elections, Van der Straeten was elected a representative in the Belgian federal parliament for the first time. Three years later, in the 2010 elections, she wasn't re-elected. In 2018, Van der Straeten re-enters the political foreground. She becomes alderman of Public Works in Koekelberg [1] and a candidate for the 2019 federal elections on the Ecolo list in Brussels where she was re-elected as a representative. In her second passage in the Chamber, she worked out an agreement on the capacity remuneration mechanism.
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Van der Straeten led her party's policy shift of extending the life-span of Belgium's remaining nuclear power plants. [2] By July 2022, she reached an agreement in principle with energy provider Engie to extend the lifespan of two nuclear reactors — Doel 4 and Tihange 3 — by 10 years. [3]
In May 2022 she announced that Belgium would be funding work on small modular reactors of 25 million euros a year for four years. [4]
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Media related to Tinne Van der Straeten at Wikimedia Commons