The government is going to cut back on the expenditure of almost all ministries in order to get public finances in order. The so-called STAP budget, a pot for training for workers and job seekers, will be scrapped next year. The deductible remains at 385 euros.
Sources in The Hague report this about the spring memorandum, the annual adjustment to the national budget that the cabinet wants to present today.
To close the gaps in the national budget, the cabinet will use the ‘cheese slicer method’: almost all ministries will have to make cuts. Only the Ministry of Defense is exempted because of the war in Ukraine.
The STAP budget for training and development has already received a lot of criticism (video):
Cutback round
Due to the cutbacks, the so-called STAP budget will start again two years after its introduction, which was a pot of 200 million euros per year for workers and job seekers to retrain. The Ministry of Health, one of the largest in terms of expenditure, is also cutting back. That is why we also looked at increasing the deductible for a long time, which now stands at 385 euros, but this was ultimately abandoned.
Minister Sigrid Kaag (Finance) is tightening the reins with the round of cuts, but the effect is that the budget deficit will drop below 3 percent of GDP again. Now that was just above, but EU rules do not allow that. Kaag is expected to present the House of Representatives with the prospect that in the autumn, around Prinsjesdag, raising taxes for entrepreneurs and the wealthy will also be considered.
According to insiders, efforts have been made to ‘limit the suffering for the citizen as much as possible’. “That worked out pretty well. If you look at the gap in the budget.”
Setbacks
The cabinet struggled with cost items, for example, it is allocating an extra 7.5 billion for Groningen due to the aftermath of gas extraction. And there are quite a few setbacks. For example, the government was able to borrow money for free for a long time due to the low interest rate, but now that it has started to rise, Rutte IV is at risk of spending up to 9 billion euros per year on loans in the coming years, say government sources. In addition, a hefty cost item is expected at asylum: due to the rising influx, it may lose up to 5 billion euros more than previously estimated.
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