Caroline Gennez
Caroline Gennez is a Belgian socialist politician and a former chairwoman of the Socialist Party – Different in Flanders.Biography
From the age of 5 until she was 14, she was a talented tennis player. A hernia ended this career. She got a Master in Political and Sociological Sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven. After her studies, she joined the Young Socialists, and became their chairperson in 1998.
While working as an advisor to Johan Vande Lanotte, she became a city councillor and an alderman in Sint-Truiden. In 2003, her party appointed her to the Belgian Senate and made her move to Mechelen. In 2004 she became fraction leader in the Flemish Parliament. Since October 2006, she is first alderman in Mechelen, responsible for education, youth, employment and social economy.
After the electoral defeat in June 2007 at the federal elections, she was elected the successor of Johan Vande Lanotte as chairperson of the SP.A, the party of which she has been vice-president since 2003. Between May and October 2005, she was already chairperson ad interim of the SP.A. After her announcement in June 2011 to not run for a second term as chairwoman, she was succeeded by Bruno Tobback on 18 September 2011.
