Many households who are worried about money due to rising energy prices and rising inflation will not have to count on extra help this year. New plans to prop up purchasing power are so difficult to implement that it is better to wait until 2023, the cabinet says.
Money or unwillingness is not the problem, said Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) during the debate on the Spring Memorandum on Tuesday. It is simply ‘too great a risk’ for the already heavily burdened implementing organizations. Technic. Lines. Too few people.
The opposition does not believe that explanation. A large number of parties say that anything is possible. They blame the lack of action on political reasons and threaten to torpedo the new budget if the cabinet does not take measures after all.
“Shameless”, GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver called the response of the cabinet. PVV leader Geert Wilders spoke of “a middle finger” to the Dutch population. “Next year is simply too late,” said Attje Kuiken (PvdA).
Can’t or won’t?
The House has been calling for extra support for weeks now, now that the financial need continues to increase among many families as a result of rising prices. The Central Planning Bureau (CPB) estimated in June that if policy remains unchanged, up to 1.2 million households could run into problems next year. Nibud fears that even 2.5 million households, not only low-income but also middle-income households, in financial difficulties will end up due to high energy prices.
The government has always been skeptical. Not much would be possible, on top of the six billion euros that had already been set aside in the autumn and spring to accommodate households. When the House of Representatives first debated the Spring Memorandum in mid-June, the pressure to do something grew. The debate was subsequently halted, the cabinet went in search of a solution, the coalition entered into talks with the opposition behind the scenes, and calculations and discussions took place.
The result of that search: nothing is possible. An increase in the minimum wage, a reduction in tuition fees, an adjustment of allowances or a rent freeze: all these things could only be done next year. A temporary doubling or increase of the health care allowance, as proposed by Volt and PvdA and GroenLinks respectively in June, carries the risk of hundreds of thousands of recoveries. Another proposal from the debate, to raise money by introducing a solidarity levy for companies that made significant profits in recent months, would also fail.
“If you look at all the things that were in front of you, you just find out that it is fairly disastrous in implementation,” Rutte summed up on Friday during his weekly press conference in Nieuwspoort. Think leader Farid Azarkan was even more succinct in his criticism during the follow-up to the Spring Memorandum debate: “Actually, it is: Rutte says no†
Actually it is: Rutte says no
The opposition, from left to right, was unhappy with the Prime Minister’s explanation. “You threw a baking paper over the fence, where all the plans of the opposition were shot,” said SP leader Lilian Marijnissen. “Why has there not been an active contribution?” Laurens Dassen (Volt) wanted to know. “Why was it not thought: how are these plans feasible?”
He made a pass himself. If the cabinet feared a repeat of the Allowances affair, was it not an option not to reclaim anything and take the loss into the bargain? That did not seem like a good idea to the prime minister: “Then you let go of all principles under your legislation.”
‘poverty wave’
Rutte saw one way out after all. He hopes that the energy allowance with which the cabinet pays the 800,000 households with the lowest incomes by 800 euros can already be increased by 500 euros. The municipalities implement this allowance and would be able to do so, as it turned out shortly before the debate.
The coalition was satisfied with that, but the opposition was not. That is not unimportant, because the cabinet needs at least part of the opposition – JA21, GroenLinks, PvdA or a number of smaller parties together – to guide the budget changes from the Spring Memorandum through the Senate next week.
The criticism: hundreds of thousands of Dutch people who are just above the subsistence level, still get it wrong. “What the cabinet says is: it is almost better to be on benefits than to work for the minimum wage,” said an annoyed Klaver.
“A wave of poverty is coming that is unparalleled,” said Pieter Omtzigt. “What have we learned from the childcare allowance? If you can get people by in time, they won’t get into those debts, they won’t come to those collection agencies. Once they are pushed over the edge, we will have debates here in January and February about hundreds of thousands of households that need to go into debt restructuring.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of 6 July 2022
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