Pieter de Geus

In this Dutch name, the surname is de Geus, not Geus.

Pieter de Geus
Pieter de Geus in 1980
Minister of Defence
In office 25 August 1980 – 11 September 1981
Prime Minister	Dries van Agt
Preceded by	Willem Scholten
Succeeded by	Hans van Mierlo
Personal details
Born	Pieter Boudewijn Richard de Geus (1929-02-23)23 February 1929 Rotterdam
Died	5 May 2004(2004-05-05) (aged 75) Maassluis
Alma mater	Erasmus University Rotterdam Leiden University

Pieter Boudewijn Richard de Geus (23 February 1929 – 5 May 2004) was a Dutch politician and a member of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). From 1980 to 1981, he served as Minister of Defence in the First Van Agt cabinet.

Biography

Pieter de Geus was born on 23 February 1929 in Rotterdam. He studied business economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 1946, he went into the Royal Netherlands Navy, studying at the Royal Naval College before finding employment at the Ministry of Defence, where he became Director-General of Economics and Finance in 1976.

In 1980, de Geus was picked to be Minister of Defence in the First Van Agt cabinet. As minister, he was a strong opponent of unilateral disarmament, and wrote a letter to the commanders of the Dutch Armed Forces on the desirability of nuclear armaments, for which the opposition accused him of infringing on officers' free speech rights. After his tenure as minister, he would serve in various other roles, including Director-General of Eurostat from 1982 to 1984 and a member of the board of directors of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research from 1984 to 1990. In 1998, he obtained his PhD from Leiden University on the topic of the New Guinea question.

Pieter de Geus died in Maassluis on 5 May 2004.

See also

• Eurostat