The populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) which has emerged as from Holland’s provincial elections with a heavy win has propelled a number of fishing industry figures into the Flevoland Government, including a fisherman, a fisherman’s wife/entrepreneur and a fisherman’s daughter.
It was no surprise that former Urk municipal councillor Anja Keuter who led the BBB list in Flevoland was elected. She works with her husband and sons in a Urk fishing company that alternately fishes for eel, crab and sole in various waters.
Anja Keuter itself is mainly active in the trade and export of fish and crab. She has been advocating for Dutch and Urk fisheries both within and outside politics for years – and became prominent when she crossed swords in a fierce television debate with a Greenpeace spokesperson who defended dumping rocks onto fishing grounds.
Urk fisherman Jan de Boer is on the list, and last week he witnessed his trawler UK-33 being cut up at a shipbreaking yard in Kampen.
‘If The Hague had offered the fishermen some perspective, this would not have been necessary,’ commented as he saw the trawler being scrapped.
His son, journalism student Jacob-Willem de Boer, is producing a documentary about his father’s last days fishing. Jan de Boer will work in the new provincial government on fisheries issues, among other things.
Flevoland fisherman’s daughter Andrea van Veen-Van den Berg has also been elected for BBB. Her brothers operate beam trawler Z-35 in the North Sea and in the Bristol Channel.
