Erik van der Burg, member of Dutch Parliament and former State secretary wins 2023-2024 Frans Evers Award for Mutual Gains

This year’s winner of the Award is a very experienced manager and politician. As director of a healthcare institution, he thought he could serve the interests of the people entrusted to his institution even better by entering politics. He was an alderman In Amsterdam for two terms, became a member of the First and Second Chamber and State Secretary. Several of his “ground rules” seem to come straight from the MGA domain.

He believes that a political administrator in the Netherlands has no power, but does have authority and the possibility of gaining the goodwill factor on your side. He believes that using power is a sign of weakness. For the goodwill factor, you have to work on reciprocity: granting the other person something as well.Communication must be open and honest for this, not only with other managers and representatives but also with the people it directly concerns.  

He realises that his credibility is at stake, especially if he is accused of not listening. The award winner has proven in practice that he can do this; in his conversations with stakeholders he always tries to find out why stakeholders take certain positions, looking for their interests. A good example is the conversation with residents in a municipality that already accommodates 1200 asylum seekers. He talked to the people about the differences between the current situation and the ministry’s wish to set up a second large reception location in addition. Land and buildings for that location had already been purchased for many millions. He found the arguments and the attitude of the residents decisive and decided to abandon the plan.

In negotiations he often appeals to joint responsibility as a value that underlies negotiations about interests.“You are not helping me but to solve a problem for all of us”.

He believes that as a negotiating administrator you must have a broad repertoire of approaches; you must take into account, for example, the personality of the other negotiator and also his or her political and social background in your argumentation and in coming up with a win-win result. If he has to do something for the other party, he knows that, for example, education is very important for a liberal administrator and the socially weaker in society for a social democrat member. That determined the choice of his alderman portfolio in two college negotiations. For example, by assigning the healthcare portfolio to himself as a liberal negotiator, he assured himself of support from more left-wing parties in the college. And by later taking on the difficult leasehold problems, he showed that he really wanted to do something about it.

Our winner has also applied MGA principles internationally, in particular the principle of coalition formation, when he knew that the Netherlands alone could not achieve much. Personally looking for the positions and interests of his colleagues in the other European countries on the Migration Pact, he saw that a small group of countries, and in particular the Netherlands, would determine the majority in favor or against. In this situation, he decided to postpone coalition formation until it was clear how the interests of the Netherlands could best be served. With this attitude, the influence of the Netherlands increased significantly with a satisfactory result.

The winner of the Award for 2023-2024 considers reaching consensus with the parties involved to be “the highest” in our democracy. In all his functions, he has shown that the ideas of the Mutual Gains Approach can be applied in practice with good results and he is therefore an example for others in our society. The winner is…Erik van der Burg!