King Willem-Alexander’s response after swearing in Rob Jetten’s team of ministers was short but to the point: “This country faces an uncertain situation in these challenging times. I wish you much wisdom.”

There will be no wittebroodsweken, or honeymoon, for Jetten’s cabinet, which will need to restore public trust after Dick Schoof’s chaotic 18-month term, clear the bottlenecks in construction and the asylum system, and steer through €16.5 billion of cuts to healthcare and social security.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that the coalition of D66, VVD and CDA is 10 seats short of a majority of seats in the lower house. In the Senate it has just 22 of the 75 members, forcing it to court opposition votes from parties on both left and right.

Around 30% of voters say they have some or a lot of confidence in the new government, according to a survey by Ipsos I&O, but among low-income groups the figure is just 23%.

The previous right-wing coalition of PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB started with similar confidence levels but stronger support from lower earners.

Jetten has already had to replace one member of his team before his cabinet was sworn in. Nathalie van Berkel, D66 candidate for junior finance minister, stepped down after it emerged she had exaggerated her qualifications in LinkedIn.

The opposition has already signalled it is prepared to play for high stakes and forge unholy alliances to defeat some of the most unpopular measures in the coalition agreement.

On Friday the economic planning agency CPB produced its assessment of the impact of the cabinet’s plans, which found that the average household would be 0.4% worse off over the four-year term.

Opposition parties immediately seized on the analysis as evidence that working Dutch people would bear the brunt of the cuts programme.

Healthcare payments

Jesse Klaver, leader of the left-wing alliance GroenLinks-PvdA, the largest opposition group, said “ordinary people will pay hundreds of euros more while the richest are being asked for nothing more.”

ChristenUnie leader Mirjam Bikker, whose party has three seats, said in a social media post: “Building a better Netherlands? Not for the common man or woman.”

An early target for the opposition is the plan to unfreeze the “own risk” or deductible element of compulsory health insurance, which has been unchanged at €385 for the last nine years.

The cabinet wants to raise it to €460 next year and link future increases to inflation, which the CPB calculated would mean patients paying €520 a year in upfront costs by the end of the cabinet term in 2030 – though they will be capped at €150 per treatment.

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV party, which wanted to halve the payment when it was in the last coalition, quoted the €520 figure on X with an angry-face emoji.

Gidi Markuszower, leader of a faction that broke away from Wilders’ party, also criticised the spending plans as “a guarantee of more poverty [and] the breakdown of our social security”, indicating that the budget cuts have the potential to unite parties that are usually poles apart.

Retirement age

The cabinet wants to speed up the increase of the retirement age so that every year that people’s life expectancy increases will be spent working and people in their thirties will have to wait until they turn 70 to claim their pension.

That plan will face resistance from the pensioners’ party 50Plus, which has two seats and could marshal support from other populist factions with an older voter base such as the PVV.

The government will also face headwinds with its ambitious plans for infrastructure and housebuilding, this time from the sheer complexity of the challenge.

Jetten has picked Eleanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan, the first woman to reach the rank of lieutenant general in the Dutch army, to head the housing ministry, and she will need all her experience of running military operations to succeed.

The cabinet has adopted its predecessor’s target of building 100,000 new homes a year, but the figures for last year show constructors managed just 70,000 and the pipeline is drying up.

Investors and developers have warned that the €1 billion the cabinet wants to invest in housebuilding is not enough, and Boekholt-O’Sullivan will be dependent on the efforts of cabinet colleagues such as junior climate minister Jo-Annes de Bat, who needs to find ways to boost the capacity of the electricity network.

Housebuilding, like all construction, has also been hampered by the long-running failure of successive cabinets to solve the problem of excessive nitrogen pollution levels.

Nitrogen crisis

A Council of State ruling in 2019 outlawed the system for issuing environmental permits and forced the government to introduce measures to reduce nitrogen compound emissions near conservation zones.

The cabinet’s plans to open Lelystad Airport for civilian and military flights could be an early casualty, as the airport’s flight paths cross designated nature reserves such as the Veluwe.

More than €243 million has been invested in developing Lelystad in the last eight years and its owners, Royal Schiphol Group, hope to start the first flights in 2027, but legal experts warn the plan is likely to be challenged in court by environmental groups who have won several cases against the government in recent years.

The nitrogen reduction plans also sparked long-running protests by farmers, who are responsible for the bulk of nitrogen pollution.

The agriculture sector has accepted that reform is necessary, but the new minister, Jami van Essen, will still face a tough task persuading farmers to go along with his plans.

Previous cabinets have pledged to support the sector but come forward with few firm proposals: of the 3,000 farmers whose environmental permits were invalidated by the 2019 ruling, only 14 have managed to qualify for one under the new rules.