August 31, 2026 Elco Brinkman in parliament. Photo: Martijn Beekman/ANP
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Elco Brinkman, the Christian Democrat minister and party leader whose 1994 election defeat pushed the CDA into opposition for the first time in decades, has died aged 78. He died on Monday in Leiden after a short illness, his family said.
Brinkman became minister of welfare, health and culture in 1982, aged 34, serving seven years under Ruud Lubbers.
As minister he coined the phrase “caring society”, arguing that people had grown too dependent on the welfare state. He pushed through cuts to welfare and the arts and steered a new media law that opened the Netherlands to commercial television.
He took over as CDA leader in parliament in 1989 and was earmarked as Lubbers’s successor, but his 1994 campaign collapsed after Lubbers publicly withdrew his backing. The CDA fell from 54 seats to 34, and Brinkman left national politics in 1995.
He later chaired the construction federation Bouwend Nederland and returned as the CDA’s senate leader from 2011 to 2019.
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