Defence minister avoided military service

Defence minister Eimert van Middelkoop has come under fire from military unions and MPs for saying he was ‘very pleased’ that he had been able to avoid military service in the 1970s.

In an article in magazine Vrij Nederland, Van Middelkoop is reported as saying that after the two-day military check-up, ‘I realised this was not for me. It would make me extremely unhappy’.
The minister, from the orthodox Christian party ChristenUnie, was able to delay his compulsory stint in the armed forces because ‘he could not be missed’ as parliamentary worker for the CU’s predecessor, the GPV. People over the age of 30 were exempt from military service, which was abolished in the Netherlands in 1996.
A spokesman for the minister told the Volkskrant that Van Middelkoop did not deliberately try to avoid military service but was simply happy that he could do his ‘dream job’ with the GPV.
The opposition right-wing Liberal party VVD has written to prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende urging him to explain how Van Middelkoop can function as defence minister. Socialist Party MPs said the comments were ‘extremely bad’ at a time when the armed forces have an acute personnel shortage.
‘This proves that the wrong man is in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ Wim van den Burg, chairman of the AFMP military union said in the Telegraaf.
But the CU’s main coalition partners said there was no reason to question Van Middelkoop’s ability to do the job.