As the local election results are finalised, politicians in Eindhoven believe their efforts to win international votes may have worked.
The Christian Democratic CDA, which fielded multiple international candidates on the slogan “Eindhoven, our home”, has won three extra seats, taking it to nine. Liberal progressive D66 won two extra seats, taking it to seven. Meanwhile, foreign-born candidates for both parties attracted enough personal support to win a seat whether or not they were in an electable position.
Alina Totti, from Romania, was seventh on the D66 list and won in both her own right and on direct votes. She campaigned on informing EU citizens and those with five years of Dutch residency of their right to vote – saying these voices “deserve to be heard”.
She told Dutch News it feels “surreal” to be elected, after seven years in the Netherlands. “It tells you that Eindhoven is not only a city that attracts global talent, but one that is willing to trust it with public responsibility,” she said.
“Eindhoven has changed enormously over the past decade. Its international community is growing fast: engineers, researchers, labour migrants, entrepreneurs, families. Representation should reflect that reality. [But] too many people don’t realise they can vote in municipal elections or feel local politics speaks to them.”
She particularly wants to represent migrant labourers from countries such as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Spain, many of whom arrive for a job with an intermediary agency but end up exploited and homeless.
“While everyone talks about expats – highly skilled, high income – very few people look at the biggest group of internationals in the Netherlands,” she told Dutch News before the election. “And these people have a really tough life.”
Chaitali Sengupta, a writer and languages expert from India who has lived in Eindhoven for two decades, appears to have won a seat for the CDA despite being 14th on the list – because so many voters opted for her personally.
A practising Hindu, she told Dutch News before the election, she had found a home in the family values of the CDA and was focused on including everyone who calls Eindhoven their thuis.
One of her campaign priorities was better language support for internationals, for example, more evening language cafes for Dutch learners to practise and meet native speakers.
“Internationals who take efforts to learn language must also find better and easy ways to practise the language,” she said. “I would also like internationals to engage in local community activities, and be part of resident associations, to integrate better in the society.”
Diversity
Miriam Frosi, head of the CDA group and a long-term resident who was born in Italy, told Dutch News that international Eindhovenaars are making a real difference – although it is unclear if foreign-born voters were behind the rise in turnout from 41.8% to 44.4%.
“We do not yet know who exactly voted for us but one thing is already clear: the internationals on our list have made a tremendous contribution,” she said. “The internationals (myself included), received 4,003 votes, which is the equivalent of 2.5 seats on the council. I am extremely proud of the diversity within our list.”
In her eight years as a councillor, she has been campaigning for more multilingual city information, including on voting rights.
Debate
Chris Dams, lead candidate for D66 Eindhoven, said there are indications that the international vote has grown. “We think this is the case, although we can’t be sure,” he said.
“There were indeed a number of [international] candidates with CDA and D66 who were chosen thanks to preferential voting. And we really did our best: we made English-language flyers, we had an international debate in English where there were at least 200 internationals present, and with our international candidates, we have tried to represent these voters better.”
Dams added that choosing a “smart and very competent” international candidate was also important because of the local debate about population growth. “At some point, a lot of expats came to Eindhoven, they settled in Eindhoven and became real Eindhovenaren,” he said.
“So we need to listen to their voices properly in the decisions we take here. Maybe that didn’t happen enough in the last four years, and I think it’s really positive that this will change.”
Lower incomes
Chip machine maker ASML, one of Europe’s most valuable companies, has been given the green light by the council for massive expansion plans creating 20,000 new jobs, with a €2.5 billion cash injection from the government to improve infrastructure, education and housing. But the population has grown since 2021 by around 6% a year, to almost 250,000 people and local media have expressed concern about the pressure on healthcare, schools and housing.
According to city statistics, 46% of the population has foreign roots and a CBS analysis found internationals were generally young, childless, new to the country, and most had a disposable household income (after tax) of €20,000 to €50,000, while 19% earned up to €100,000.
“This division is very similar to the household incomes in the entire Netherlands…though lower incomes are a bit more prevalent in the population of internationals in Eindhoven,” a CBS researcher said.
Connection
Foreign workers do not always get a positive press. “There is pressure on facilities, pressure on housing and of course you have some groups that attribute that to internationals and look at the whole tech industry negatively,” said Dams.
“We have had a lot of discussions in the council where there has been a lot of simplification, as if everyone just needs to speak Dutch as soon as possible and people must adapt. The fact is that internationals are not really involved in that conversation. So I’m very happy that this is going to change.”
After the formal results are published next week and coalition negotiations begin, said Frosi, a more diverse group of councillors plans to improve social cohesion. “Looking to the future, I have very concrete ambitions: more venues where internationals and locals can truly meet,” she said.
“Places where we can host a big Sinterklaas celebration or other international festivities together. We want to bring a tone of connection, togetherness, and build a strong social infrastructure where nobody is left behind.”
