Foreign affairs minister Frans Timmermans says he does see advantages to allowing people to be parliamentarians in both the Dutch and the European parliaments.

The minister was reacting to Geert Wilder’s wish to take up a seat in the Brussels parliament as well as keeping his Dutch seat.

Timmermans told radio programme Tros Kamerbreed that he supports the idea of having dual MPs in principle, because it would be a way of making people feel more involved in European politics.

However, not only would the concept need to be incorporated into EU policy but changes would need to be made to the different parliaments’ operations to make sure both jobs could be done properly, he said. At the moment, both functions are considered to be full-time jobs.

However, Timmermans said, the Netherlands will not be pressing for a treaty change at present.