The Netherlands will elect 150 MPs for the lower house of parliament on October 29. Here is a round-up of Wednesday’s biggest election news, one week ahead of the vote.

Voters are getting older
Around 13.4 million people are eligible to vote in the Dutch parliamentary elections on October 29, according to preliminary figures from the national statistics office CBS.

Some 28% of the electorate is now aged 65 and over, up from 18% 30 years ago. Voters under 35 have held steady at about a quarter since 2010, down from a third in 1995.

Almost 91% of the adult population is eligible to vote, down from 94% in 2017, a change the CBS attributes to increased immigration, as not all newcomers have Dutch nationality. An estimated 360,000 people will be eligible to vote for the first time.

Older electorates are most prevalent in Bergen (NH) (41.9%), Laren (41.6%) and Vaals (41.1%). Student cities are relatively young: Groningen (39.9%) and Utrecht (39.6%) have the highest shares of 18- to 35-year-olds, followed by Leiden, Nijmegen, Wageningen and Delft.

Aid spending may increase again
Ten parties – CDA, ChristenUnie, D66, Denk, GroenLinks-PvdA, NSC, PvdD, SGP, SP and Volt – on Tuesday signed a joint declaration calling for a return to the long-standing international target of spending 0.7% of GDP on development cooperation.

Current plans from the right-wing caretaker government would see the aid budget reduced by €2.5 billion by 2027 — more than one third of its 2023 level.

In their election manifestos, right-wing parties want to maintain or deepen the cuts. The PVV proposes abolishing development aid altogether, arguing that “the Netherlands is not a cash machine for the rest of the world”.

The VVD also plans further reductions, linking any remaining spending to Dutch security and economic interests.