Daniël van der Stoep

Short Biography

Daniël Teunis van der Stoep (born 12 September 1980, Delft) is a Dutch politician who was member of the European Parliament during two periods from July 2009 to August 2011 and from December 2011 to July 2014. He was elected to the European Parliament for the Party for Freedom (PVV) at the 2009 election. He resigned as an MEP on 17 August 2011, having caused a car crash when drunken driving, and was replaced by Auke Zijlstra. He returned to the European Parliament on 14 December 2011, after the Treaty of Lisbon expanded the Parliament by eighteen MEPs. It was initially disputed Patricia van der Kammen should be elected. However, the PVV did not allow him to rejoin their delegation, and went on as an independent. In 2012, Van der Stoep founded his own party, Article 50, with the intention of participating in the European Parliament election, 2014. The name refers to article 50 of the Maastricht Treaty, of which the first sentence is "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." In the 2014 European Parliament elections the party did not earn a seat.