EU: Timmermans to lead Dutch leftist parties in Nov election

Amsterdam: European Union commissioner Frans Timmermans will resign as the bloc’s climate chief to lead the Labour and Green Left parties of the Netherlands in a joint ticket in the parliamentary election on Nov. 22, an EU official said on Tuesday.

Labour and Green Left on Tuesday confirmed Timmermans would be their leader in the election after the EU commissioner in July said he wanted the job in a bid to become the next Dutch prime minister.

An EU official told Reuters that Timmermans will resign from the commission to run in the Dutch election.

A commission spokesman earlier on Tuesday declined to comment on the process of picking a successor for the 62-year-old Dutchman.

It is not clear who will replace Timmermans, who serves as the European Commission’s vice president and is in charge of the EU’s Green Deal – its wide-ranging package of policies on climate change and the environment.

The Netherlands is expected to nominate a new candidate for the commission, but that candidate will not automatically get the same responsibilities as Timmermans had.

Timmermans, who speaks English, German, French, Italian and Russian in addition to his native Dutch, is also a well-known figure in the Netherlands, having served as foreign minister from 2012 to 2014.

After having spent nearly a decade in Brussels, he will stand in the first Dutch election since 2006 in which outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte will not be leading his conservative VVD party.