The Senate remembered former senator Jan Terlouw on Tuesday, May 27. He was a member of the Senate for D66 for four years, from June 8, 1999, to June 10, 2003. In the Senate, he was mainly concerned with defense, traffic and water management, economic affairs, development cooperation, and internal affairs.
Physicist
Jan Terlouw was born on November 15, 1931, in Kamperveen. After the war, he obtained his high school diploma and studied physics at Utrecht University. He then obtained his doctorate at the same university in mathematics and natural sciences, for which he conducted research in the Netherlands, the United States, and Sweden.
Politician
After returning to the Netherlands, Jan Terlouw became politically active: first locally as a member of the city council of Utrecht for D66 and from 1971 nationally. He was a member of the House of Representatives for ten years, of which eight years as parliamentary leader, and became in 1981 deputy prime minister and minister of Economic Affairs in the second Van Agt cabinet. The cabinet fell after a year and Terlouw chose a role outside of politics: he became the secretary-general of the Conference of European Ministers of Transport.
In 1991, he took on a public role again as Commissioner of the Queen of Gelderland. He remained in this position until his retirement in 1996. For a while, it seemed that he had concluded his political-administrative life. But, he said in 1999, the blood crawls where it cannot go. He was elected by the members of D66 as a candidate for the elections of the Senate.
In the Senate, Terlouw mainly spoke about the dualization of local government, municipal reorganizations such as in the regions of Haaglanden and Twente, the corrective referendum, and the method of appointing the mayor.
Writer
In 2006, Jan Terlouw told Volkskrant Magazine that he would prefer to be remembered as a writer. Therefore, during the commemoration, the President of the Senate Jan Anthonie Bruijn gave the last word to his authorship by reflecting on Terlouws literary legacy, which consists of childrens books, novels, thrillers, and poetry.
Jan Anthonie Bruijn: The contribution of Jan Terlouw to Dutch society, the Dutch parliamentary democracy, and Dutch literature has been of great value. His connection to public administration and the general social interest is an example and inspiration for us all.