One of the candidate junior ministers in the new Dutch government has been caught out wrongfully suggesting she had two degrees on her cv, although she failed to complete either.
Nathalie van Berkel, currently an MP for D66, had been nominated as junior finance minister but, the Volkskrant reported on Monday, her CV contains several major errors.
Van Berkel says she studied for a master’s degree in business administration at Leiden University, but in fact she only did a pre-master’s course and failed to complete that. She also claimed to have studied law at Erasmus University, but again failed to complete her first year.
The Volkskrant asked Van Berkel several times to clarify her CV, which also featured on her parliamentary and LinkedIn profiles. “Every time it transpired that the courses she started were of a lower level or shorter duration than she had originally claimed,” the paper said.
In a reaction, Van Berkel said that she could have been “more explicit” about her education on her CV but that the errors were a simple “mistake”. She also said she always told the truth about not completing her degree courses during interviews.
A D66 spokesman later confirmed this to the NRC, while adding that her CV could have been “much clearer”.
Van Berkel is due to discuss her ministerial role with party leader and the next prime minister, Rob Jetten, on Tuesday.
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