Cabinet to scrap welfare cuts in revised budget deal – RTL

The Dutch government has scrapped most of its planned cuts to social security as it tries to attract opposition support for next year’s budget, RTL Nieuws has reported.

The cabinet will also delay raising the excess charge for health insurance by a year and invest €1.5 billion in mitigating the impact of inflation, particularly rising energy prices, on spending power.

The deal was the outcome of protracted negotiations between the three coalition partners, D66, VVD, and CDA, which ran through the weekend and most of Monday as the party leaders stretched the deadline to send the draft budget to the Council of State.

RTL Nieuws said it had seen leaked details of the budget proposals, which will not be formally announced for another two weeks when finance minister Eelco Heinen presents it to parliament.

The U-turn on welfare spending is a blow for the right-wing VVD, which had earlier said it would not compromise on the €6.5 billion worth of cuts to incapacity benefit, unemployment payments and substitute pay for new mothers on maternity leave.

Another plan in the coalition agreement to save €2.8 billion by increasing the retirement age in step with life expectancy, rather than by eight months for every extra year, has also been cancelled, as announced earlier by social security minister Hans Vijlbrief.

Heinen and prime minister Rob Jetten had spent the last two weeks trying to do a deal with opposition parties in advance to get their support for the budget, as the coalition is 10 seats short of a majority in the lower house and 16 seats short in the Senate.

But those talks ended without agreement as the three coalition parties struggled to agree among themselves about what concessions they should make to opposition groups on the left and right. Ministers will now have to find the votes when the budget plans go through parliament during the autumn.

Jetten’s D66 party and the Christian Democrats (CDA) reportedly wanted to scale back welfare cuts to appeal to the largest opposition party, the left-wing Progressief Nederland (Pro), while the VVD preferred a package that addressed the demands of right-wing parties such as JA21, with more tax cuts and less welfare spending.