Pol Van Den Driessche
Pol Van Den Driessche is a Belgian ex-journalist, writer and politician. He was born in Oudenaarde on 22nd June 1959. He was the representative of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party (CD&V) until 2011, when he changed to Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA). Since 2014 he has been co-opted senator for N-VA.
Political career
Van de Driessche started his political career in 1983 as councillor in Bruges. From 2007 until 2010 he was senator elected directly by the Dutch electoral college, representing the CD&V. Between 2009 and 2010 he was Deputy member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Assembly of the Western European Union. From 2007 onwards he was partly connected to the UGent as Practice assistant at the Department of Communication Scienc-es. In 2011 Van de Driessche put his political career on hold and he started working for the Flemish TV-channel VTM where he was political expert on their news-channel. At the end of 2011 he picked up his political career again, but this time as representative of N-VA. Before he could fulfil any im-portant function he decided to stop being active as a politician because of some controversies. He stayed communication specialist for N-VA though. In 2014 he made a comeback by trying to be elected into the Senate as N-VA representative. He did not get a chair, but was eventually co-opted by his party in the end.
Education
Van Den Driessche obtained his Masters in History at the University of Ghent (UGent).
