Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who has led the Party for Freedom (PVV) since he founded it in 2006. He is also the party's leader in the House of Representatives, having held a parliamentary seat since 1998. In the 2010 formation of the first Rutte cabinet, a minority government of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD)—which he left in 2004—and Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), Wilders actively participated in the negotiations, resulting in a "tolerance agreement" between the PVV and these parties. Wilders has been charged in relation to incitement multiple times. Wilders was first accused of criminally insulting religious and ethnic groups and inciting hatred and discrimination. 

Early life and career

• Wilders was born on 6 September 1963 in the city of Venlo, in the province of Limburg. He is the son of Johannes Henricus Andreas Wilders and Anne Maria (Ording) Wilders. He is the youngest of four children, and was raised Catholic. His father was Dutch; his mother was born in colonial Indonesia with a mixed Dutch and Indonesian background. His father worked as a manager for the printing and copying manufacturing company Océ, and had hidden from the Germans during the Second World War, an experience so traumatizing that he refused to physically enter Germany even forty years later.
• Wilders received his secondary education at the Mavo and Havo middle school and high school in Venlo. 
• Wilders' goal after he graduated from secondary school was to see the world. Because he did not have enough money to travel to Australia, his preferred destination, he went to Israel instead and volunteered for a year in a moshav, Tomer, on the West Bank.

Personal life

• A France 24 report mentioned that the Dutch far-right leader lives a restricted life and remains under tight security knit. Wilders' couple has no children, the report added.
• Krisztina Wilders has not made many public appearances and her lifestyle, and current residing location is also not known. Wilders grew up in a Catholic family and had a brother, and two sisters. He was born in 1963 in Netherlands' Velno and joined politics after he got influenced by the ideas of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

Political career

• In 1997, Wilders was elected for the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) to the municipal council of Utrecht, the fourth largest city of the Netherlands.
• A year later, he was elected to the Netherlands' national parliament, but his first four years in parliament drew little attention. However, his appointment in 2002 as a public spokesman for the VVD led Wilders to become more well known for his outspoken criticism of Islamic extremism.
• In September 2004, Wilders left the VVD, having been a member since 1989, to form his own political party, Groep Wilders, later renamed the Party for Freedom. 
• The Party for Freedom called for a €16 billion tax reduction, a far stricter policy toward recreational drug use, investing more in roads and other infrastructure, building nuclear power plants and including animal rights in the Dutch constitution. In the 2006 Dutch parliamentary election, their first parliamentary election, the Party for Freedom won 9 out of the 150 open seats.
• On 8 March 2010, Wilders announced that he would take a seat on the Hague city council, after it became clear he won 13,000 preference votes. Earlier he had said he would not take up a seat if he won. In the parliamentary elections on 9 June 2010, the PVV increased its number of seats from 9 to 24 (out of 150), getting 15.5% of the vote. This made the PVV the third party in size. 
• In the May 2014 elections for the European Parliament, the Party for Freedom received 17.0% of the vote and four seats, a slight gain compared to the 13.3% of the vote the party had received in the previous parliamentary elections. In the run-up to and aftermath of those European elections, Wilders worked with the French Front National's Marine Le Pen to try to form a new parliamentary group in the European Parliament. 

Public reception

• Wilders has become a controversial figure with polarized opinions on him from the world news media. Regarding his reputation in the Netherlands, Wilders stated in 2009, "Half of Holland loves me and half of Holland hates me. There is no in-between."
• He has been described as populist, labelled as both "extreme right" and far-right, and defended by others as a mainstream politician with legitimate concerns saying that such labels are shallow smear attempts. Wilders himself rejects the labels and has called such descriptions "scandalous".
• Some Muslim critics of Wilders accuse him of using Quranic verses out of context, and of manipulating verses to have a different meaning than the verses intended to. Wilders' views on Islam prompted the Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, to reprimand him.
• In October 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sued Wilders after he posted a series of tweets against Erdoğan and urged NATO to take Turkey out of the bloc. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that a legal case "against a Dutch politician that could possibly even lead to a curtailment of freedom of expression is not acceptable."

Awards and recognition

1. Oriana Fallaci Free Speech Award in 2009
2. Nominated for Sakharov Prize in 2010
3. Dutch Politician of the Year 2010
4. Dutch Politician of the Year 2013
5. Dutch Politician of the Year 2015
6. Dutch Politician of the Year 2016
7. The Hungarian Order of Merit in 2022