Eimert van Middelkoop

After high school, van Middelkoop attended what is now Erasmus University, earning a B.A. in Sociology in 1971. In 1971 and 1972, he was a teacher at the Reformed Social Academy in Zwolle. He was exempt from military draft for being indispensable as staff member of the Reformed Political League in the House of Representatives. ==Politics==

Van Middelkoop became a member of the House of Representatives in 1989, while affiliated with the Reformed Political League. Since 2000, he has been aligned with the Christian Union, which was the product of a fusion of the Reformatory Political Federation (RPF) and the Reformatory Political Federation (GPV). He specialised in foreign and military affairs, prepared the inquiry by the House of Representatives into the role of the Netherlands in the fall of Srebrenica. He lost his seat in the House of Representatives in the 2002 election. From 2003 until 2007, van Middelkoop was a member of the Senate. In the 2006 elections, the Christian Union party doubled its seats and joined the fourth Balkenende cabinet. Van Middelkoop became Minister of Defence in 2007. In September 2008, he told the Dutch opinion magazine, Vrij Nederland, that he would have been very unhappy to have joined the army. Because of this and other remarks, he received criticism from military labour unions, who said that Van Middelkoop had lost his credibility. ==Decorations==