Draft:Mels Klabbers

Mels Michiel Klabbers (born 30 October 1990) is a Dutch politician. He is the Co-President of Volt Europa, together with Francesca Romana D'Antuono, since being elected in November 2023.

Career
Klabbers was born in Groningen, Netherlands, on the 30th of October 1990, where he also grew up. He studied pedagogy at the NHL Hogeschool and did a minor in healthcare & welfare management at the HAN University of Applied Science. In 2020, Klabbers completed the "Leadership, Organising and Action" course at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Between 2011 and 2016, Klabbers worked as a football referee for the KNVB. In 2016, he became an intern for the Municipality of Amsterdam, working at the Action Centre Safety Amsterdam as a project support intern for the Top400 approach, focused on reducing High-Impact Offences in the city.

Klabbers became politically active in 2019 when he joined the newly founded party Volt Netherlands, the Dutch chapter of the pan-European political movement Volt Europa. He first became a campaign volunteer for the party and, later that year, the City Lead for Volt Amsterdam, a position he held until 2020. Klabbers focused on building a community of volunteers within the party.

From 2020 to 2022, Klabbers held the position of Community Organiser at Volt Netherlands, supporting the local chapters of Volt within the Netherlands and helping increase the number of active members. In 2022, Klabbers became the Campaign Lead for Volt Netherlands, where he led the party's campaign during the 2023 Dutch provincial elections, the 2023 Dutch Senate elections, and the 2023 Dutch general election, in addition to preparing the party for the 2024 European Parliament elections in the Netherlands.

In 2023, Klabbers announced his candidacy for Co-President of Volt Europa. In November 2023, he was successfully elected to the position by the members of Volt Europa during the party's General Assembly in Paris. As Co-President, Klabbers led the party's campaign for the European Parliament election of 2024. Volt Europa ran in 15 different countries, electing 5 MEPs in total (2 in the Netherlands and 3 in Germany), up from 1 in 2019.

Political positions
When running for Co-President of Volt Europa, Klabbers stated the political context of the rise of populism, Brexit, rising social inequality, climate change, and an aggressive Russia as motivators for him to become politically active. He expressed support for European cooperation and argued that European countries are not equipped to deal with those types of challenges on their own.