Deadlock looms in budget talks as opposition drive hard bargain

Talks to secure support from opposition parties for next year’s budget are entering their final days with no sign of a breakthrough.

Jesse Klaver, leader of the left-wing opposition group Pro (previously GroenLinks/PvdA) said the two sides had “not moved a step closer to each other” after emerging from negotiations on Monday.

Michiel Hoogeveen, of the right-wing JA21, accused the coalition parties of “kicking the can down the road”, while the hardline Protestant party SGP said a deal was “a long way off”.

Finance minister Eelco Heinen has a deadline of August 28 to submit a draft budget to the Council of State before the formal presentation of his plans at the state opening of parliament on September 15.

MPs will not vote on the measures until late in the autumn, but the cabinet wants to do a deal with the opposition to secure majority support in both houses before budget day.

Yo-yo politics

Prime minister Rob Jetten said earlier: “This cabinet has big ambitions to make major investments in the next few years in more affordable houses, more security and the economy of the future. It’s good to do that with others if we want to avoid yo-yo politics.”

The minority coalition of D66, VVD and CDA needs the support of 10 opposition MPs in the lower house and 16 senators to pass its legislation.

Asylum minister and deputy prime minister Bart van den Brink, of the CDA, said the government was prepared to take “big steps” to accommodate the opposition groups. But Klaver said he had seen little sign of movement from the coalition.

Pro wants the cabinet to shelve plans to cut welfare spending by €6.5 billion in order to raise money for other departments, chiefly defence, where the Netherlands is striving to hit the new Nato target of 3.5% of GDP.

Wealth taxes

The party argues that the money should be raised by raising wealth taxes instead. “The cabinet seems to be mainly concerned with the position of millionaires in the Netherlands while we are worried about the people who are paying the bills,” Klaver said.

But Heinen’s party, the right-wing liberal VVD, is opposed to wealth taxes and would prefer to make concessions to parties on the right such as JA21 and SGP, who want to see tax cuts instead. But SGP MP André Flach said on Tuesday that the coalition’s plans “are not enough at the moment”.

The SGP, which draws its vote from Bible-Belt communities, wants the cabinet to suspend plans to legalise surrogate motherhood and permit late-term abortions of up to 22 weeks in some hospitals.

The party has teamed up with JA21 to form a right-wing block of 12 seats, which would be enough to give the coalition a majority in the Lower House. However, they would still be short in the Senate, where any right-wing majority depends on the support of the farmers’ party BBB.

BBB key

The BBB has not been invited to the talks so far because of its staunch opposition to the cabinet’s plans to reduce nitrogen pollution, which would require some livestock farmers to give up or drastically reduce the size of their herds.

Party leader Henk Vermeer is meeting Heinen on Tuesday, but the BBB is not expected to compromise on its stance. “Anyone who can count can see they can’t do without us”.

The 20 seats held by Pro would give the cabinet a clear majority in the lower house, while only one small party such as Volt would be needed to pass the budget in the Senate.

But the right-wing VVD is reluctant to rely solely on Klaver’s party, which was kept out of the coalition in February on the insistence of VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz.