MPs turn against slow student fine

A majority of MPs on Wednesday backed calls to scrap the controversial fine for students who take more than four years to complete their degrees, following last-minute protests from student groups.

The momentum for change came on Tuesday evening, when CDA leader Sybrand van Haersma Buma said during an election debate his party no longer supports charging slow students an extra €3,000 in fees a year.
The new measure is due to come into effect on September 1 and will apply to new and current students.
Budget
The right wing VVD, which forms the current minority government with the CDA, wants to press ahead with the fines. Scrapping them would leave a gap in the government’s finances, VVD MP Klaas Dijkhoff told television current affairs show Nieuwsuur.
‘We have made agreements and that is what we will stick to. We support the legislation in its current form,’ Dijkhoff said. The measure is expected to raise €180m.
Student bodies say they want parliament to be recalled to debate the issue. ‘If such a far-reaching measure no longer has the support of a majority in parliament, then there should be a vote on it,’ the organisations said in a joint statement.
MPs from the left wing green party GroenLinks added their voices to calls for parliament to be brought back later on Wednesday. ‘I hope we get clarity for students [before September 1] because it is a very bizarre situation at the moment,’ MP Tofik Dibi told Nos television.
A spokesman for junior education minister Halbe Zijlstra, who piloted the legislation through parliament to a narrow majority, told news agency ANP: ‘If parliament wants to do something else, it will have to find the cash.’