The European Union’s climate chief Frans Timmermans said today that he wants to be the next Dutch prime minister and will contest the seat in the Netherlands’ parliamentary elections in November.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s four-party coalition government resigned earlier this month after failing to reach an agreement on immigration restrictions, prompting a November 22 election.

Timmermans has officially announced his candidacy as leader of the Labor Party and the Green Left party who are joining forces to try to halt the decline of the left-wing parties.

“This morning I told the Labor Party and the Green Left party that I would like to stand as their leader in the next election,” Timmermans said on public Dutch television.

“I want to become prime minister because I believe that we can do politics in a different way than in recent years, that we can build a fairer society, in which the market serves the people and not the other way around.”

If the parties confirm Timmermans’ candidacy as their leader, a decision not expected before the end of August, he will have to leave his EU post.

A European Commission spokesman said Timmermans would not be required to resign immediately, as his candidacy “remains hypothetical” until the parties confirm he will be their candidate for prime minister.

Timmermans, 62, is vice-president of the European Commission and is responsible for the EU’s Green Deal — its broad set of policies on climate change and the environment.

He is also well known in the Netherlands having been foreign minister from 2012-2014 in previous Rutte cabinets.

Timmermans, who comes from the Dutch province of Limburg and has been in Brussels for almost a decade, will be a candidate for prime minister in the first election since 2006 that Rutte will not lead his conservative party, the VVD.

Timmermans was chosen as the candidate for Dutch party leadership after his campaign for the European Social Democrats in the 2019 European elections was widely seen as a success.

Timmermans, who speaks English, German, French, Italian and Russian in addition to Dutch, was seen as a capable negotiator during international climate negotiations and his departure from EU politics will cause turmoil.

How he will fare in Dutch politics is an open question, but according to a poll released today, 39% of Dutch voters said they trusted him to lead the next government.