Hendrikus Wilhelmus Maria Schoof was born on 8 March 1957 in Santpoort into a Roman Catholic family, as the second-youngest of seven children (six sons and one daughter).[2][3][4][5]
Schoof's father was a municipal civil servant, including for social services.[5][6] At the age of eight, Schoof moved with his family to Hengelo, where he attended Lyceum De Grundel.[7]
From 1996, Schoof held various senior positions in the field of security.[10] He served as deputy secretary-general at the Ministry of Justice and Security.[3]
He was then appointed chief director of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) in 1999.[3][11] The Netherlands was experiencing a relatively high influx of asylum seekers as a result of the Kosovo War, and the organization had a significant backlog of requests. Schoof was responsible for implementing reforms to the Aliens Act by State Secretary for Justice Job Cohen in 2001 that simplified the asylum procedure, and he worked to deport applicants that did not qualify. The number of asylum applications declined, which Schoof attributed to stricter migration policies. A later government evaluation concluded that the legislation had a more limited impact, suggesting that external factors were the primary drivers of the drop.[12]
Schoof left the IND to become director-general for public order and safety at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in 2003. In that position, he was in charge of restructuring the police force from a number of regional organisations into a single National Police Corps.[13]
Intelligence career
Schoof during a meeting with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in 2022
Schoof served as director-general at the Ministry of Justice and Security from 2010 to 2013.[5]
In 2013 Schoof was appointed National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV).[10] He allowed his employees to monitor potential terrorists on social media through fake profiles despite warnings from his attorneys.[5] Following the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 after it left Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, he coordinated the Dutch crisis response, strengthening his relationship with Prime Minister Mark Rutte. In 2022, a court in the Netherlands convicted three men linked to the Russian military of murder in connection with the plane’s destruction, which killed all passengers onboard, including 196 Dutch citizens.[14] When Schoof requested an independent investigation by Twente University into the performance of his office, he and his employees interfered with the questions, the composition of the committe and the publication date. He exerted pressure to soften its main conclusion. For example, the word 'badly' was changed to 'not well'.[6][9][15][16] Schoof was also responsible for internal security, addressing both Islamist radicalisation and the recruitment of ISIS fighters in the Netherlands.[14]
Under Schoof's leadership, the NCTV was accused by civil rights group Bits of Freedom of carrying out illegal surveilliance of Dutch citizens, especially Muslims, on the internet.[17] Starting in 2017, the NCTV launched a program of using private investigators to infiltrate mosques and spy on them.[17] In 2019, an investigation by GeenStijl determined that Schoof ordered subordinates to create fake social media profiles to monitor "potential terrorists." He warned the education ministry and the municipality of Amsterdam that supporters of the Salafi movement were on the board of an Islamic school. He was found to have exerted pressure to attenuate the conclusions of the investigations.[5][18]
Schoof led the General Intelligence and Security Service as director-general from 2018 to 2020.[10]De Volkskrant wrote that his relatively short tenure was characterized by a culture clash. Schoof unsuccessfully tried to make the agency more outward facing, including through cooperations with institutions and universities.[18]
On 1 March 2020, Schoof succeeded Siebe Riedstra as secretary-general of the Ministry of Justice and Security, the most senior non-political position within the ministry.[15][19][20][21] In his role, he was involved in negotiations on asylum reform that led to the collapse of the fourth Rutte cabinet in July 2023. Upon reaching the legal retirement age in March 2024, Schoof chose not to retire and was granted an exemption to continue working for three more years.[8]
A debate two days later in the House of Representatives about the cabinet's government policy statement was characterized by some media outlets as chaotic. Schoof's defence against accusations of racism directed at cabinet members was described as "lame" by PVV leader Geert Wilders, and the debate was later suspended to allow Schoof to rebuke health minister Fleur Agema (PVV) for disrupting the debate through a live-tweet.[29]
Schoof with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in 2024.
Schoof presented the cabinet's governing agreement on 13 September 2024, expanding on the outline of the coalition agreement. It reiterated the cabinet's intention to declare an asylum crisis, bypassing initial parliamentary approval.[30] Schoof stated that citizens were experiencing an asylum crisis but said he was unable to specify conditions or a timeline for its resolution.[31] When documents by civil servants took the position that using emergency powers lacked legal justification, Nicolien van Vroonhoven (NSC) raised concerns, while Wilders warned that the cabinet could face trouble if an emergency law was not enacted.[32][33] Schoof subsequently facilitated negotiations between the coalition parties, and an agreement on asylum measures was reached in October 2024 that excluded the use of emergency powers.[34][35]
In the wake of the November 2024 Amsterdam attacks, Schoof said that he was "ashamed" and "horrified by the antisemitic attacks on Israeli citizens." He called the situation "completely unacceptable," adding that "the perpetrators will be identified and prosecuted."[36][37] He blamed a specific group of young people with a migration background for the attacks, and said that the events pointed to a broader integration issue.[38] Schoof cancelled his attendance of the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference to monitor the Dutch government's response.[39] On 15 November, State Secretary Nora Achahbar announced her resignation because of "polarizing interactions during the past weeks."[40] Media outlets reported on offensive, radical, and potentially racist remarks about the Amsterdam attacks during a meeting of the Council of Ministers. Schoof invited the leaders of the four coalition parties to join the cabinet for crisis talks to avert a cabinet collapse, and they finally agreed that other cabinet members of NSC would stay on. Schoof denied allegations of racism within the cabinet and coalition parties.[41][42][43]
Political positions
In a 2017 interview with WNL Schoof said that the Kick Out Zwarte Piet (KOZP) organisation "could potentially become extremist and therefore use violence" as an explanation as to why it had been included in the annual Dutch security service Terrorist Threat Assessment Netherlands, while also noting that KOZP did not yet use violence, and saying that this was done with similarly situated organizations on both the right and the left. After a complaint by KOZP, the group was downgraded to an activist organisation in 2019, but was categorized as a Polarisatie (polarizing) group in reports for some of its methods.[44][45]
In 2019, Schoof said that Salafi movements were seeking to influence Islamic schools in Amsterdam.[5][46] In February 2020 he told a Dutch parliamentary commission official inquiry that the new generation of Dutch Salafi Muslims constituted a significant long-term threat to the Dutch rule of law, because "they are striving for a parallel society where the rules of the Dutch legal system do not apply."[47] He said that one reason their motives are difficult to detect is that Dutch Salafi Muslim organisations use what he referred to as "facade politics", by espousing moderation in public, but preaching harsh extremism in private.[47]
Schoof was a rank and file member of the Labour Party (PvdA) for over 30 years until he left the party in early 2021, saying that he no longer felt aligned with it views.[6][48] Following the PVV's general election victory in November 2023, Schoof called it a signal of distrust towards the government in an interview. He said that the public could not have been wrong about their concerns if they voted for the PVV in such large numbers.[9]
In 2024 when he was nominated prime minister by the four coalition parties, Schoof stressed that he would act as a non-partisan politician and not join the PVV, but he said that he shared similar stances on immigration, asylum and refugees, social security, farmers, and international security to the parties of his cabinet.[49][50]
Schoof pledged that he would take a tougher stance on immigration, arguing that asylum and migration levels were straining society, in particular social services and cohesion. He said that he would enact laws to scrap family migration and limit the number of foreign students in the Netherlands.[51]
He enjoys running, and completed his first marathon in 1987 and his 18th marathon in 2024.[8][57] As prime minister, Schoof completed a half marathonin Amsterdam in 1:53:00 under the alias "Peter Jansen".[58]
Footnotes
^According to Parlement.com, he was a member for 'more than 30 years'. The exact time is not specified[1]
^Schoof, Dick (28 October 2000). "Hollands Dagboek: Dick Schoof" [Dutch diary: Dick Schoof]. NRC (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 5 June 2024. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
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