practically guaranteed her a seat in the House. The seventh was her former De Balie-colleague Vendrik. GroenLinks more than doubled its seat total from five to eleven. In her first period in the House, Halsema was spokesperson justice, asylum seekers and home affairs. She became well known due to her opposition to the tougher migration law proposed by Job Cohen. In the 2002 election, she was given the second place on the list. The party lost one seat. Halsema became vice-chair of the parliamentary party and among others spoke for the party in the first debate with the First Balkenende cabinet. In November of that year Paul Rosenmöller unexpectedly announced that he would leave politics. He asked Halsema to succeed him, and she immediately agreed. Ten days before the party congress she was announced as the only candidate for the party leadership and became top candidate for the 2003 election. The party lost another two seats. In addition to the party leadership she was spokesperson on areas of culture and media, healthcare, spatial planning and the environment. As party leader she had a more prominent position and put forth a number of private member's bills, including one concerning judicial review and another that sets a fixed price for books (together with the leader of the Democrats 66 (D66) Boris Dittrich). Between October 2003 and January 2004, Halsema was on maternity leave. She got twins. Marijke Vos, the vice-chair of the parliamentary party took over as party leader. After her return to the House of Representatives, Halsema started a debate about the course of the left in general and GroenLinks in particular. She claimed that her party was the last "left liberal party in the Netherlands". She called for increased cooperation with the Socialist Party, the Labour Party and GroenLinks, aiming at a left-wing majority government after the 2007 election. She asked Labour Party leader Wouter Bos to speak out in favour of such a cabinet, but he refused in order to allow for a possible coalition of the Labour Party and the Christian Democratic Appeal. In January 2006, she was elected "Liberal of the Year" by the Youth Organisation Freedom and Democracy, the youth organisation of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), because of her new political course, in particular where it came to reforming the welfare state. In June 2006, she was the only candidate for the