Marcel de Graaff

M.J.R.L. "Marcel" de Graaff (; born 7 April 1962) is a Dutch politician. He was a member of the Senate of the Netherlands for the Party for Freedom (PVV) from 2011 to 2014. He served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Netherlands in the periods 2014–2019 and 2020–2024. He was co-president of the Europe of Nations and Freedom, and he switched party affiliation to Forum for Democracy in his second term.

Early life and career Marcel de Graaff was born on 7 April 1962 in Rotterdam. De Graaff studied theology at the Radboud University Nijmegen between 1981 and 1988.

De Graaff worked as a consultant for IT & Operations from 1 August 1989.

Political career De Graaff was a member of the Senate of the Netherlands representing the Party for Freedom from 7 June 2011 until 1 July 2014. He was parliamentary group leader of the PVV in the Senate from 25 September 2012 until 10 June 2014. He became Member of the European Parliament for the Netherlands per 1 July 2014. He has also become the parliamentary group leader of the PVV in the European Parliament since the beginning of his term as an MEP. On 28 October 2015, De Graaff voted multiple times for Le Pen in her absence, which is against the European Parliament's rules. Parliament president Martin Schulz withheld € 1,530 in allowances as a punitive measure.

De Graaff was the PVV leader for the 2019 European Parliament election. The party did not obtain any seats in the election. His term in the European Parliament ended on 1 July 2019. He was appointed per 1 February 2020.

Forum for Democracy In 2022, he defected to Thierry Baudet's Forum for Democracy (FvD) party after expressing support for its more hardline stance against the COVID-19 vaccine and criticising the PVV's pro-vaccine policies. He was suspended from Identity and Democracy later that year, and he decided to leave the group on 22 October due to their differing stances towards Russia. He became a Non-Inscrit member of European Parliament.

De Graaff was one of 16 MEPs who voted against condemning President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua for human rights violations, in particular the arrest of Bishop Rolando Álvarez. He had also been one of 13 MEPs who voted against condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nederlands Dagblad noted that De Graaff copied President Vladimir Putin's rhetoric in defense of the war. In a March 2024 debate in the European Parliament, he lauded Russia's sheltering of Ukrainians, and he claimed without evidence that Ukraine had been responsible for bombing hundreds of thousands of children and for supplying children for pedophile rings and organ trade. The home and office of one of De Graaff's assistants was raided in May 2024 by Belgian and French authorities, respectively, in an investigation into Russian interference in European politics. The Czech government had discovered earlier that MEPs had received payments for repeating Russian talking points through the online publication Voice of Europe.

De Graaff was planning to run for another term in the June 2024 European Parliament election in Belgium's Dutch-speaking electoral college. However, the Flanders chapter of Forum for Democracy, which had been founded in January 2024, did not manage to collect the required 5,000 signatures to participate. De Graaff's second term ended on 15 July 2024.

Electoral history

+ YearBodyPartyVotesResult.Party seatsIndividual 2012 House of Representatives Party for Freedom 48 157 15 2014 European Parliament Party for Freedom 1 4 2019 European Parliament Party for Freedom 1 2023 Senate Forum for Democracy 13 2023 House of Representatives Forum for Democracy 45 71 3