Jan Jambon

Jan Jambon (born 26 April 1960 in Genk) is a Belgian politician of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) who has been serving as Minister-President of Flanders since 2019.

Jan Jambon is believed to have helped establish the far right political party Vlaams Blok in the city of Brasschaat in the late 1980s.

From 1985 to 1988 he was a member of the main board of the national Volksunie Youth and chief editor of the monthly magazine WIJ-Jongeren.

He belonged to the "right wing" in the party.

Their position on the placement of nuclear weapons was diametrically opposed to the official VU party position.

Jambon left that party behind in 1988, when nothing came of the so-called Third Phase of state reform.

The broadening operation led by Hugo Schiltz and Jaak Gabriëls also proved difficult for him to digest, as did the election of the 'left-wing' member of parliament Herman Lauwers, national chairman of the VVKSM Scouts from Brasschaat.

As a result He left this party in 1988 after the broadening operation wanted by Hugo Schiltz and Jaak Gabriëls, and moved with Peter De Roover to the Vlaamse Volksbeweging (VVB).

In the mid-1990s, Jambon tried together with Peter De Roover to influence the political character of the annual IJzerbedevaart in Diksmuide.

He founded, among others with Lieven Van Gerven, then chairman of the Davidsfonds, the IJzerbedevaart Forum.

Since 1991 he has been a board member of the Algemeen Nederlands Zangverbond (General Dutch Singing Association).

In 1992, he co-authored the book Vlaanderen staat in Europa with Peter De Roover and became a member of the pro-independence think tank In de Warande.

From 1992 he was for many years chairman of the Overlegcentrum van Vlaamse Verenigingen and also a national board member of the Vlaamse Volksbeweging, where he was elected treasurer in October 1998 and subsequently became political and administrative secretary.

This forum died a quiet death in 1996 after the much more radical Werkgroep Radicalisering IJzerbedevaart, consisting of Voorpost, VNJ, NSV and others, then started the current IJzerwake in Steenstrate and Ypres.

For several years he was chairman of the Overlegcentrum van Vlaamse Verenigingen (think tank of Flemish associations) and a member of the leadership of the Vlaamse Volksbeweging (Flemish People's Movement), a separatist movement demanding Flemish independence, of which he was elected treasurer in October 1998 before becoming administrative and political secretary.

On 8 December 2005 Jambon founded a branch of the N-VA in the Antwerp town of Brasschaat.

On 18 February 2006 Jambon resigned from the Vlaamse Volksbeweging to work for the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) in order to prepare the partition of Belgium.

At the municipal elections on 8 October 2006, Jambon received 565 preferential votes and from January 2007 he was alderman for finance and local economy.

He replaced Kris Peeters as a member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives in 2007.

The N-VA was, at that time, partnered with the Christian-Democratic and Flemish party.

In mid-March 2007, he stood as a candidate in Antwerp on the list of N-VA and CD&V for the federal parliamentary elections, where he obtained 9,099 preferential votes.

On 28 June 2007 he became a member of parliament in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, succeeding Kris Peeters on the CD&V/N-VA cartel list.

After the vote on the split of the electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde on 7 November 2007 Jambon declared that the N-VA would not step into an orange-blue emergency cabinet if there was no prospect of state reform.

In the Chamber, he was N-VA group leader from 2008 to 2014.

Within the walls of the parliament, Jambon founded a "Diamond Club".

Jan Jambon became chairman, Willem-Frederik Schiltz from Open Vld and Servais Verherstraeten from CD&V became vice-chairmen.

Their intention was to represent the interests of the diamond sector at parliamentary level.

In June 2010 and May 2014 he was re-elected on an N-VA list.

In the elections of 13 June 2010 and of 25 May 2014, he was re-elected respectively as list leader and list duper of the Antwerp N-VA Chamber list.

It was remarkable that people's representatives so openly called for the interests of one business sector to be defended in an 'informal club'.In the 2012 provincial council elections, Jambon was the last one on the list in the canton of Antwerp in the municipality of Brasschaat, where the N-VA obtained 39 percent of the votes.

He became mayor of Brasschaat in 2013 after his party won the local elections in 2012.

He then became mayor of the municipality on 1 January 2013.

In November 2014, he was replaced as acting mayor by Koen Verberck (also N-VA), after joining the new Federal Government.

In October 2014 he became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior and Security, charged with the direction of public buildings, in the Michel Government.

In 2014, he was included in the Michel I government, where he became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Security and the Interior.

Jambon remained in this position until the government fell in December 2018.

In the municipal elections of 2018, N-VA obtained an absolute majority in the municipal council of Brasschaat with 44 percent, allowing him to remain mayor.

In 2019, he became the new Flemish minister-president of the Jambon government.

He is also the mayor of the municipality of Brasschaat.

Jan Jambon began his political career with the Volksunie Youth (VUJO) in Limburg and the Volksunie.