Opposition urge cabinet to pick a route as budget debate begins

The left-wing opposition party Pro is willing to talk to the coalition parties about reducing healthcare costs, but only if the cabinet abandons its €6.5 billion cuts to welfare spending, party leader Jesse Klaver said on the first day of the Dutch budget debate.

Klaver said it would be a “scandal” if the government fell over its first budget, but he also pressed Rob Jetten’s administration to make up its mind whether to seek support from left or right.

As the first speaker in the two-day debate on finance minister Eelco Heinen’s budget, Klaver said his party wanted to break the deadlock that led to pre-budget talks breaking down.

“After so much political unrest in recent years, I think it is in all our interests that this cabinet succeeds,” he said. “Sometimes I think the opposition is keener to make it a success than the coalition parties themselves.”

Jan Paternotte, leader of the largest coalition party D66, called on parties on all sides to work on a budget with broad appeal and look beyond “the left-right discussion in The Hague”.

But his words found little support from the opposition, which accused the coalition of D66, CDA and VVD of lacking leadership. “What kind of road map does the cabinet see before it?” Mirjam Bikker, leader of the ChristenUnie, asked.

The three parties have 66 seats in the lower house, 10 short of a majority, while in the Senate they need to find 16 extra votes to pass their legislation.

No perfect match

Pro, with 20 seats in the lower house and 14 senators, provides the most straightforward route, but the right-wing VVD is reluctant to make too many concessions to the left and favours a deal with parties such as JA21 and the orthodox Protestant SGP.

Paternotte said the coalition wanted to continue talking to parties on all sides in the coming weeks. “The perfect political match doesn’t exist, only the will to come to an agreement. My invitation stands.”

Klaver himself came in for criticism from other opposition leaders who said the proposed budget deal had already made too many concessions to the left.

Joost Eerdmans, leader of the hardline conservative JA21, said the cabinet needed to “make the choice” between his party and Pro rather than trying to reach out to both.

In contrast to Pro, JA21 argues the cabinet should cut even more from the welfare bill to create room in the budget for tax cuts and measures to ease the cost of living.

Eerdmans also said plans to invest billions in climate change measures should be redirected to help working families. “The idea that we can change the world’s climate is unrealistic,” he said.

Two budgets

Eerdmans suggested to Paternotte that the cabinet should write two budgets, one for the left-wing parties and one for the right, and let MPs debate them both.

But Paternotte urged Eerdmans to “take off the rose-tinted glasses”. “How does that get you to a majority in the Senate?” he said. “Pro or JA21 on their own aren’t enough.”

Klaver’s pitch to the cabinet also prompted Socialist Party leader Jimmy Dijk to ask how far Pro was willing to compromise on healthcare spending.

Pro would not “work to break things down”, Klaver replied, but he saw potential to make savings by tackling “all kinds of treatments that aren’t necessary” and “taking the market out of youth care”.

Draft published

Paternotte also said D66 was willing to discuss surrogate parenthood with the  SGP, which wants the cabinet to block any moves to legalise the practice as a condition for its support.

MPs also voted to ask the cabinet to publish the original draft budget by finance minister Eelco Heinen which was rejected by his coalition partners, prompting an extra weekend of negotiations.

NRC reported that the original version preserved most of the plans to cut welfare spending, despite Pro pressing for them to be taken off the table. In both the draft and the final version Heinen proposed delaying around half the cuts by a year.