Now she wants to become Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Switzerland is only 23rd in the expat ranking

In the Netherlands, Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz is entering the race to succeed Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who announced his retirement after the fall of the government.

“I am ready to make our country even stronger and more resilient. Safer, richer and ready for the future,” the 46-year-old told De Telegraaf on Wednesday. In the upcoming elections, she wants to stand as a candidate for the right-liberal VVD, which has been the strongest party in parliament since 2010 and has supplied Prime Minister Rutte.

In the course of the week, the party board will probably make the decision to nominate Yesilgöz as the preferred candidate, De Telegraaf wrote. The minister is seen as a young star within the VVD. After four years in the House of Representatives, she became Secretary of State for Climate Change in 2021 and Minister of Justice in 2022. She led months-long negotiations on migration policy reform, after which the government collapsed last Friday. There will probably be new elections in November.

Yesilgöz was born in 1977 in the Turkish capital Ankara and is of Kurdish descent. She came to the Netherlands when she was eight years old. So far, the country has had no woman as head of government and no politician with a migration background at the head of the government. (aeg/sda/dpa)