“Very shocked” Pieter Omtzigt withdrew from the formation table last week. The overview he requested of “real financial setbacks and risks” at all ministries had given him such a bad picture that he did not dare further negotiations with PVV, VVD and BBB. How big are those setbacks? And how seriously should a new government take it into account?
As an exception, informant Ronald Plasterk sent the official letters from all twelve departments with his report of the first information round. And so everyone can see whether the NSC leader's fears are well-founded.
Renovation of the Binnenhof
The picture that emerges from the 87-page appendix can be summarized as follows: the amounts are shockingly high and it is impossible to gauge how real the risks actually are. The overview is far from complete and the bandwidths of some risks are wide. For example, the costs that the Ministry of Agriculture expects if Greenpeace manages to enforce a rapid nitrogen reduction in court are between 10 and 15 billion euros.
Large parts of the risk overview have been blacked out or omitted due to (market) sensitive information. Such as: unforeseen additional costs for the renovation of the Binnenhof, the renovation of the Afsluitdijk and possible claims around Schiphol Airport, both from local residents and the aviation sector.
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A quick look at the visible figures in Excel shows that the one-off setbacks of all ministries could add up to more than 174 billion euros in the coming years. For anyone who looks at it superficially, that is indeed immense: about 40 percent of the total national budget.
The so-called structural setbacks, which according to ministries could occur annually from 2028, are already much lower at approximately 23 billion euros. That amount is close to the possible gap in the budget from 2028, which an official advisory group already warned about last autumn.
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Civil servants see a wasteful cabinet
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