The coalition parties and the cabinet have reached an agreement on the budget for next year. That is what Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) and Deputy Prime Minister Sigrid Kaag (D66) say on Wednesday morning after a fourteen-hour marathon meeting. The agreement comes just in time for the important deadline to send the plans to the Council of State for advice. The cabinet will formally vote in favor of the plans on Wednesday evening.
Rutte and Kaag did not discuss the content of the budget plans. These will be announced on Prinsjesdag, the third Tuesday in September. An important theme in the consultation was the support of households in the rising cost of living. According to the ANP news agency, Rutte only said that the budget plans “will be good for the purchasing power of the Dutch”.
The coalition and the cabinet have been negotiating the budget for several weeks. The group leaders of coalition parties VVD, D66, CDA and ChristenUnie met at the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday at 3 p.m. At the beginning of the evening, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Deputy Prime Ministers Sigrid Kaag, Carola Schouten and Wopke Hoekstra arrived. Just before 5.30 am on Wednesday morning, Rutte and Kaag reported that an agreement had been reached. Kaag said according to the NOS that the consultations were ‘intensive’. Rutte told NOS that the consultations lasted so long during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday because the issues were “complex”.