Bolkestein worked as a corporate director for Royal Dutch Shell from May 1960 until July 1976 and as a manager for an engineering company in Amsterdam from September 1976 until January 1978.

Bolkestein became a member of the House of Representatives shortly after election of 1977 taking office on 16 January 1978 serving as a frontbencher and spokesman for Economic Affairs.

In August 1999 Bolkestein was nominated as the next European Commissioner in the Prodi Commission, and was giving the heavy portfolios of Internal Market and Services and Taxation and Customs serving from 16 September 1999 until 22 November 2004.

[1] In 1976, Bolkestein wrote an English language play named Floris, Count of Holland, under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Niels Kobet.

As an opinion leader, he was known for his daring and controversial positions on such issues as multicultural problems in Dutch society, political dualism between government and parliament, and the structure and expansion of the European Union.

[6] In 1996, his political integrity came under heavy criticism, because it was revealed he had written a letter to Health Minister Els Borst, in which he asked her to help a pharmaceutical company, of which Bolkestein was member of the board of commissioners.

In 2005, his house in northern France had its electricity cut briefly by the local energy company after he criticized French protectionist measures against incoming electricians from Eastern Europe.

MEPs eventually reached a compromise on the text and the Parliament adopted it on 12 December 2006; 2 years after Bolkestein left office, under the Barroso Commission.

The three MEPs henceforth published a press statement asking the opening of an investigation by the European Union about the correct application of 10 June 1990 directive.

[8][9] On 26 April 2006, French daily 20 minutes revealed that "in May 2005, MEP Paul van Buitenen was shocked by Frits Bolkestein's presence in Bank Menatep's international consultative council (owned by Russian magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky), a sulfurous Russian banking establishment, and by his work for Shell, British-Dutch petrol company.

Two firms 'detaining secret accounts in Clearstream' ... Van Buitenen, also Dutch, then asked for 'clarification' to the European Commission and the opening of a parliamentary investigation.

The Commission's president, José Manuel Barroso, answered that these facts "don't bring up any new question" and that it is not known "if Menatep took contact with Bolkestein while he was in his functions".

The article was endorsed by many professionals ranging from Els Borst, former Dutch minister of public health, to many jurists, professors and drug experts.

In Het Verval ("The Decline"), a book about Jews in the Netherlands written by Manfred Gerstenfeld, a Holocaust survivor and senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Bolkestein is quoted as having said that practicing Jews had no future in the Netherlands, due to antisemitism among Turkish and particularly Moroccan immigrants, and that they should emigrate to the United States or Israel.