Michiel van Hulten

Michiel Frans van Hulten (born 18 February 1969) is a former Dutch politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament (1999–2004) and was chairman of the Labour Party (Dutch: Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA) from December 2005 until April 2007.

Michiel van Hulten is the son of former Member of Parliament and former undersecretary to the Minister of Transport Michel van Hulten. As a child he lived for four years in Mali and Burkina Faso, two of the world's poorest countries. In 1984 the Van Hulten family moved to New York, where father Michel worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Van Hulten earned the International Baccalaureate at Atlantic College in Wales. He holds a BSc(Econ) in Government (1990) and a MSc in Public Administration and Public Policy (1991) from the London School of Economics (LSE), and a Master of Arts in European Political and Administrative Studies (1993) from the College of Europe in Bruges. During his college years, he became a member of the Labour Party and the Young Socialists.

In 1993, Van Hulten started working as a policy officer at the Dutch Trades Union Confederation (Dutch: Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging, FNV) in Amsterdam. He was then successively private secretary (political assistant) to Education minister Jo Ritzen and Administrator in the Secretariat of the EU Council of Ministers. In 1997, Van Hulten took part in the election campaign for Tony Blair in Britain, and in 1998 he worked for the Labour Party (Dutch: Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA) campaign in the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands.

In 1999 Van Hulten was a successful Labour Party candidate in the European Parliament (EP) elections. He was a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control, whose task is to reduce fraud and irregularities. Together with colleagues from other countries and parties of the Campaign for Parliament Reform, a group of MEPs which strives for an end the monthly 'moving caravan' of Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg and retrenchment of the generous reimbursements of expenses. In 2002, Van Hulten was named one the Europeans of the Year by the weekly newspaper European Voice (now Politico Europe).

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