The names of home affairs minister Guusje ter Horst and integration minister Eberhard van der Laan are among the most often mentioned as possible candidates to succeed Job Cohen as Amsterdam mayor.

Cohen resigned on Friday in order to concentrate on becoming leader of the Labour party following Wouter Bos’s surprise decision to step down.
His shoes are currently being filled by Lodewijk Asscher, leader of the local Labour party.
Ter Horst was mayor of Nijmegen before joining the cabinet and would be the capital’s first female mayor. According to the Parool, she has said she would be interested in the job, if there is wide enough support for her.

Coalition

Van der Laan, a former lawyer, knows the city well and is currently working on putting together a new city council coalition, following the local elections. This could be an advantage because he is in a good position to talk to all the party leaders, the Parool points out.
In addition, he was asked to take on the formation process by Asscher, who knew Cohen was leaving, the paper states.
GroenLinks leader Femke Halsema has denied she is interested in the job, and her predecessor Paul Rosenmöller has also been mentioned.
Mayors are technically crown appointees, based on the advice of the cabinet. But the cabinet is currently acting in a caretaker capacity and it is unclear what the constitutional position is, the Volkskrant points out.
‘There is no precedent to deal with this,’ former constitutional law professor Jan Vis told the paper. ‘As far as I am aware there has never been a situation in which the capital city is without a proper mayor and the country without a proper cabinet.’