He began his career as a policy advisor of the party's parliamentary group in the House of Representatives and was a member of the Amsterdam municipal council in the years 2002–07.

[6] His father, Joost, was an Augustinian priest at the Salvatorkerk in Amsterdam-Noord until he married Reuten's mother, Simona, whose parents had immigrated to the Netherlands from Italy, in 1972.

[8] He started his career as a foreign policy advisor of the Labour Party's parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, and he simultaneously served on the district council of the Amsterdam borough of Zuideramstel in the years 1998–2002.

When an alderman had proposed to close sports parks and allotment gardens in order to create space for new housing projects, Reuten was a proponent of instead moving a navy complex and Food Center Amsterdam, which were located in the city.

[22] He joined the new five-member executive committee of the borough of Amsterdam-Oost on 23 November 2010 as a district alderman specialized in housing, major projects, and spatial planning.

[1][6][23] Housing construction had slowed down in Amsterdam as a result of the Great Recession, and under Reuten's leadership about half of the newly built homes in the city were located in Oost in 2011 and 2012.

[26] Reuten remained part of the executive committee, which shrank to three members, after the election and became responsible for construction, housing, the economy, sports, and diversity.

[29] He again appeared on the ballot in the 2019 European Parliament election in the Netherlands as the Labour Party's eighth candidate and received 1,222 preference votes.

[30] Reuten was appointed to the European Parliament following the election of MEP Kati Piri to the Dutch House of Representatives in March 2021.

The party won a plurality of eight seats, but Reuten was not elected as three candidates lower on the list met the preference vote threshold.