Sammy van Tuyll van Serooskerken

After his secondary education, van Tuyll studied Medicine at the University of Groningen. After graduating in medicine in 1976, he studied economics and law at the University of Amsterdam, in which he graduated in 1983 and 1987 respectively.

After a career at the Dutch Central Bank De Nederlandsche Bank and the Ministry of Finance, van Tuyll worked in Brussels from 1994 to 2001; he was Economic Advisor at the European Commission and subsequently Financial Counsellor at the Permanent Representation. In 1994, he took the initiative for the Tindemans group on the European Institutions, a think tank that reviewed the European institutions with a view to the enlargement to 27 Member States. He is co-editor of the User Guide to the Euro and taught economics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Van Tuyll has been involved with liberalism in the Netherlands and with democracy in Europe for many years. He was Member of the Board of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), but left it in 2004 because he did not share its more and more Euro sceptic views. In 2004 he participated in the European Parliament elections with a new, single-issue party “Democratic Europe”. With a view to the 2005 Dutch referendum on the European Constitution he wrote a book for Europe, against this Constitution in which he explained that those who want an effective, democratic and accountable European Union should vote against the proposed Constitution. It proposed some concrete amendments to the Constitution so as to make it acceptable to a majority of the Dutch population.

Van Tuyll is the eldest of a family of four. His father, Hendrik Nicolaas Cornelis, Baron van Tuyll van Serooskerken was Mayor of Doesburg and Lochem for the Labour Party (PvdA). He is married and has six children. He plays guitar and was member of several steelbands.