The ChristenUnie (Christians Union) is a relatively young political party in the Netherlands. It combines a conservative point of view on social issues (such as abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage) with more social democratic ideas on economic and environmental issues. The fifth-largest party in the Netherlands, it has 27,000 members.

The party was formed in 2001 from the combination of two parties, the Reformatorisch Politieke Federatie and the Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond, which had fought the 1998 elections separately. Together the parties had five seats (GPV 2, RPF 3) out of 150 in the Dutch parliament before the 2002 elections. They were expected to make a light gain, getting to about 7 seats, but the opposite happened, and the ChristenUnie lost one seat to end up with four seats.

The political leader at the time was Kars Veling . After the 2002 elections it has been argued that this had been a bad choice. Veling (it was argued) is someone who was good at keeping the peace internally in a party still somewhat divided amongst the old GPV-RPF line, but not someone who was a useful candidate for interesting the general population. Therefore a new political leader was appointed: Andre Rouvoet.

In the 2003 elections, the ChristenUnie lost another seat, keeping only three. This was probably because supporters of the party voted CDA, that was in a heavy competition with the PvdA, to make that party the largest.

External links

• Introduction (in English)