Rotterdam’s mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb brought down the curtain on his 15-year term at a farewell ceremony on Sunday in the city’s central park.

The 62-year-old will officially hand over to his successor, Carola Schouten, on October 1, but the event in Het Park was a chance for citizens to say goodbye.

“Everything comes to an end,” Aboutaleb said in his closing speech. “For almost 16 years I have been your representative in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Europe and the world, with my heart and soul and my utmost dedication.

“I will remain a Rotterdammer because you’ve made me one.”

Musicians, artists and dancers were among the performers at the event, including local crooner Lee Towers, who gave a rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone.

First Muslim

Aboutaleb was the first Muslim to be appointed mayor of a major city in western Europe when he first took up the post in 2008. He arrived in the Netherlands as a 15-year-old from the Rif region of Morocco.

Previously he had been junior social affairs minister for the Labour party (PvdA) in Jan Peter Balkenende’s fourth cabinet. He joined the party in 2003 and became an alderman in Amsterdam a year later.

In 2021 Aboutaleb shared the prize for the world’s best mayor with Philippe Rio, of the French city of Grigny. The jury praised his “commitment to treat all citizens as ‘Rotterdammers’, irrespective of their origins and backgrounds”.

Aboutaleb gained a reputation as a hardliner on law and order who was determined to curb the city’s illegal drugs trade. He travelled to Colombia to study the South American company’s efforts to combat smuggling and called for all containers passing through Rotterdam to be screened for contraband.

Confrontational

His confrontational approach sometimes led to run-ins with the city’s Muslim communities. Following the attack by jihadists on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015, in which 12 people were killed, he told extremists who were unable to tolerate satire to “get lost”.

More recently he came under fire for his support for Feyenoord City, the plan for a new football stadium, housing and leisure complex on the banks of the Maas which fell through in 2022, leaving a €50 million hole in the city’s budget.

He was also criticised for not flying the Israeli flag in the wake of the terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7, choosing instead to fly the flag of Rotterdam at half-mast so as not to exacerbate the “polarisation in our city”.

Tough job

Aboutaleb said recently he took the decision to step down after three terms as mayor after consulting his family. “I’ll go so far as to say that the domestic front was the initiator of this decision,” he told local broadcaster Rijnmond.

“Being the leader of Rotterdam isn’t an easy job,” he told NOS on Sunday. “It’s a very tough task, perhaps one of the toughest positions we have in the Netherlands.

“The whole world is at your feet, we have 175 nationalities and everything that happens in the world has an impact on Rotterdam.”

He described Schouten, the former deputy prime minister for the Christian Union (CU) party, as a “fantastic person with a fine heart.”

He urged her to foster solidarity between communities. “Division weakens us. Communality gives us strength.”