Alexander De Croo
Alexander De Croo (born 3 November 1975) is a Flemish liberal politician, economist and businessman.[1] He currently holds the office of Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium and Minister for Pensions. From 2009 until 2012, he was party leader of (Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats (Open VLD).
Political career
In 2009, he participated for the first time in politics in the European elections. He received 47.779 preference votes while being positioned tenth on the party ballot. During the elections for the Senate in 2010, he obtained 301.917 preference votes, the third most in the Dutch-speaking constituency.
On 26 October 2009, he became a candidate for the presidency of his political party Open VLD to succeed the transitional president Guy Verhofstadt. He chose Vincent Van Quickenborne and Patricia Ceysens as his running mates to compete against Marino Keulen and Gwendolyn Rutten. On 12 December 2009, he was elected president in the second round with 11.676 votes. Marino Keulen received 9.614 votes.[4] Before the election he did not have any previous experience in politics.[5]
Alexander De Croo succeeded Vincent Van Quickenborne as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Pensions on October 22, 2012. Van Quickenborne resigned and later became mayor of Kortrijk. Guy Verhofstadt was appointed transitional party president before Gwendolyn Rutten was elected as the new chairwoman of Open VLD.
Education
In 1998, he graduated in Business Engineering at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He also attended Northwestern University in Chicago in 2002 completing an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management.
Notable work
In 2013, De Croo was appointed Vice Chairman of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Ageing. The goal of the Council is to ensure the challenges of a global ageing population are understood and tackled.
