Government cuts research funding by 14 percent

Government spending on research and development will fall from 9.7 billion in 2024 to 8.4 billion in 2029, according to the annual measurement by the Rathenau Institute.

Budget cuts
The decline is entirely due to the substantial cuts in research spending implemented by the current cabinet. For example, the National Growth Fund, established in 2020, was intended to invest 20 billion euros in research and innovation, but has now been significantly reduced as the government has decided to allocate 6.8 billion euros from the fund to other purposes. It should be noted, however, that the fund had already been put on hold by the previous government.

Meanwhile, substantial budget cuts will be made in research at universities and university medical centres, where grants for young researchers have been abolished.

In the past, the Netherlands provided relatively high levels of tax support to innovative companies, but other countries are now overtaking the Netherlands, such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Austria, which have all become more generous with tax breaks.

A lot of EU money
However, the Netherlands is good at attracting European funding for research and development. No less than nine per cent of the Horizon Europe science fund goes to the Netherlands. Around 3.7 billion euros from the funds have gone to the country since 2021. Only France, Germany and Spain have received more.

The Netherlands is successful in 21.4 percent of its applications for European grants. Only Belgium has a higher percentage. Rathenau calls it ‘remarkable that Dutch researchers are obtaining more and more money from European funds in absolute and percentage terms’.