Vendrik served as the faction’s financial spokesperson for a long while. Since 2008, he has been its spokesperson on the environment.
"My most important task is to keep showing that our great ecological and social ambitions are achievable and affordable," he says. "Politics matters. I share with many people a passion and motivation to keep alive the hope of a different, better world. Of course, this will not come about solely through spending money, although many social problems originate in unfair economic relationships.

"Every time requires its own answers to social problems. It's no good remaining stuck in the systems and solutions of the past; they don’t always work any more. I think it's important to devise modern answers for exclusion and division. But we must also find clever systems for tackling environmental problems. To me, it’s a challenge to prove we can solve those problems in an affordable way, without everything grinding to a halt. And let’s be honest: it’s an outrage that millions of people in the world are still starving to death."