Fleur Gräper appointed as (first female) mayor of Tilburg

Tilburg has its first female mayor. Fleur Gräper, former State Secretary for Culture and Media, was appointed on Wednesday.

Gräper brings considerable administrative experience to Tilburg. Until recently, she lived in Groningen, the city where she studied history and later became a member of the Provincial Council and a member of the Provincial Executive. In 2024, she also served as State Secretary for Culture and Media in the outgoing Rutte IV cabinet on behalf of D66, the party she chaired between 2013 and 2015.

In over two hundred years, she is the first woman to hold the office of mayor in Tilburg. As mayor, Gräper will take a seat on Tilburg’s municipal executive board, which, in addition to her, consists of aldermen from GroenLinks, D66, VVD, and PvdA. As mayor, she will take a neutral position.

With the arrival of Fleur Gräper, Tilburg has found a successor to Theo Weterings (VVD). Weterings, who was an economics student at the Katholieke Tilburgse Hogeschool, as the university was then known, in the 1980s, was mayor of the eighth-largest city in the country from 2017 to 2025. In recent months, the position has been temporarily filled by Onno Hoes (VVD).

Leak

In October, Gräper was elected mayor. This was announced a week earlier than planned, after it was leaked that Esmah Lahlah had also applied for the position. Lahlah, a former alderwoman in Tilburg and a researcher at Tilburg University, was number two on the national GL-PvdA candidate list at the time. The municipality and province have filed a police report about the leak of the application.

_Advertentie.