Jurgen Nobel

Jurgen Norbert Jeroen Nobel (; born 7 December 1988) is a Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). He served as State Secretary for Participation and Integration in the Schoof cabinet from July 2024 until February 2026.

Early life and career Nobel was born in 1988 in Haarlem, and he grew up in Hoofddorp. His father, Jeroen, was a local Labour Party politician, serving as alderman in Haarlemmermeer and acting mayor of Aalsmeer and Den Helder. Nobel studied business administration at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences from 2008 to 2012, and he founded Le Bon, a brand of fair trade coffee, the following year. He studied public administration at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from 2015 to 2016, and he kept working for his company until 2019. His portfolio includes labor participation, poverty, disability pension, sheltered workshops, reintegration into the labor market, social cohesion, labor conditions, ESF, social affairs in the Caribbean Netherlands, and childcare. He continued efforts by his predecessor to reimburse working parents for 96% of childcare costs starting in 2027. The simplification and expansion of childcare benefits had been triggered by the childcare benefits scandal during the preceding Rutte cabinets.

In response to the November 2024 Amsterdam riots, in which supporters of the Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. were targeted, Nobel said that the Netherlands had a major integration problem and that a significant portion of Islamic youth did not endorse Dutch norms and values. Prime Minister Dick Schoof held a specific group of young people with a migration background responsible for the attacks. An alliance of mosques filed a criminal complaint against Nobel for group insult, inciting hate, and discrimination in the performance of a duty, arguing that the religious beliefs of the perpetrators were unknown. When State Secretary Nora Achahbar resigned as a result of "polarizing interactions", she cited Nobel's remarks. Nobel later clarified that he did not intend to make generalizations about population groups. Nobel presented an action plan concerning integration in February 2025 that included measures to tackle foreign interference in migrant communities, to decrease their dependency on social welfare, and to reduce practices such as female genital mutilation and forced marriage.