Thijs Berman (born 26 September 1957 in

Coevorden Coevorden (; nds-nl, Koevern) is a city and municipality in the province of Drenthe, Netherlands. During the 1998 municipal reorganisation in the province, Coevorden merged with Dalen, Sleen, Oosterhesselen and Zweeloo, retaining its name. In Augu ...

) is a former journalist. Between 2004 and 2014, he was a Dutch politician and a

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

Biography

Berman was a correspondent in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

for Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, for the Dutch Public Radio (''Radio 1''), the Dutch Inter-Churches radio and television IKON, the Dutch international radio ''Wereldomroep'', the agrarian daily ''Agrarisch Dagblad'', and magazine''

Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...

''. He presented radio and television shows, notably for broadcaster ''IKON''. He was also a regular contributor to TV5, the international French-speaking TV-station. In June 2004 he was elected to the European Parliament. He is a member of the Dutch Partij van de Arbeid, which is part of the

Party of European Socialists The Party of European Socialists (PES) is a social democratic and progressive European political party. The PES comprises national-level political parties from all member states of the European Union (EU) plus Norway and the United Kingdom ...

, and was, between 2004 and 2008, member of the Committees on Agriculture and on Regional Development. In 2008, he joined the Committees on Budget, and on Development and Humanitarian Affairs. Between 2009 and 2014 he was a member of the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

's Committee on Development and the Subcommittee on Human Rights. He also was a substitute for the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and for the Committee on Budgetary Control. Further he was the chair of the Delegation for relations with Afghanistan. In 2009 he headed Dutch Labour in the European elections after winning the party primaries. In 2009, he terminated the EU Election Observation Mission at the presidential elections in Afghanistan, as the successor of French general and politician Philippe Morillon. In 2010, he was appointed as head of the EU Election Observer Mission to Ethiopia. In 2012, he was the EU Chief Observer to the presidential elections in Senegal. In 2014, he was the EU Chief Observer to the presidential elections in Afghanistan. In 2016, Berman took up a role in Vienna, Austria, as the Principal Adviser to the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. Berman now resides in the Netherlands, where he works as Executive Director of the

Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy The Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD; Dutch: ''Nederlands Instituut voor Meerpartijendemocratie'') works to promote peaceful, just and inclusive politics worldwide. NIMD's approach is characterized by dialogue, which it facilit ...

(NIMD).

Bibliography

* ''Op zoek naar

George Fles George "Sjoppie" Fles (; 1908–1939) was a Dutch translator with a strong communist conviction. He fell victim to Stalin 's repressions. Personal life George was born in 1908 in Amsterdam, as the youngest son of Louis Fles and Celine van Str ...

, het einde van een Hollandse revolutionair in de Sovjetunie'' ('Searching for George Fles, the end of a Dutch revolutionary in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

').

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

: Van Gennep, 1993.

References

External links

European Parliament biography

Declaration
of financial interests (in Dutch;

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

file) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Berman, Thijs 1957 births Living people Dutch journalists Dutch psychologists Labour Party (Netherlands) MEPs Labour Party (Netherlands) politicians MEPs for the Netherlands 2004–2009 MEPs for the Netherlands 2009–2014 People from Coevorden People from Groningen (city) University of Amsterdam alumni Utrecht University alumni