Editing Christian Union (Netherlands) (section)

=== Establishment ===
[[File:Vicepremier-en-minister-André-Rouvoet.jpg|thumb|right|[[André Rouvoet]], Leader of the Christian Union from 2002 to 2011]]
The Christian Union was founded in January 2000 as an alliance between the RPF and GPV. Later in that year, their youth organisations, GPJC and RPFJ, fused completely, presenting an example to their mother organisations. In 2001, they formed a common [[Fractie|parliamentary party]] in both the [[House of Representatives (Netherlands)|House of Representatives]] and [[Senate (Netherlands)|Senate]]. In [[2002 Dutch general election|2002]] the alliance entered the election for the first time. The party obtained four seats, one seat less than in the 1998 election when they campaigned separately. It had polled much better, with some polling stations predicting seven or eight seats. The party's leader [[Kars Veling]] stepped down. He had been good at keeping the peace internally in a party still somewhat divided between the old GPV and RPF memberships, but had not appealed well enough to the population at large. With [[Open list|preference votes]] a woman, [[Tineke Huizinga]] (positioned seventh on the CU candidate list) was elected into parliament for the CU, becoming the first woman to enter parliament for the party or its predecessors. Because of her election, prominent party figure [[Eimert van Middelkoop]], who was no. 4 on the candidate-list, had to leave parliament.

In the [[2003 Dutch general election|2003 general election]] the party lost an additional seat, and was left with three seats. Again Huizinga (now no. 4 on the list) was elected with preference votes and this time former RPF leader [[Leen van Dijke]] (no. 3) had to leave parliament. The decline of the CU in 2003 was probably due to party supporters voting for the Christian democratic CDA, which was competing with the social democratic [[Labour Party (Netherlands)|Labour Party]] (PvdA), to become the largest party. The Christian Union was heavily involved in the formation of the [[second cabinet Balkenende]], along with the SGP. However, the liberal [[People's Party for Freedom and Democracy]] (VVD) vetoed the formation of a cabinet that included the two conservative Reformed parties, and so the progressive liberal [[D'66|D66]] became a part of the governing alliance instead. In 2004 the two organisations RPF and GPV officially ceased to exist, making final the fusion into the CU.