'If senators reject the budget, the old budget remains in place'

These past few days, several opposition parties have presented proposals to reverse the austerity measures aimed at higher education and research in whole or in part. Though they do not have a majority in the House of Representatives, they do in the Senate, so they can stop the new budget there.

On Tuesday evening, when debating on the national budget for education and research, Luc Stultiens (from the left-wing coalition GroenLinks-PvdA) left no doubt: his party is voting against the cutbacks in higher education and research. “Don’t do it,” he quoted the thousands of demonstrators who gathered in The Hague on Monday.

Even Chris Stoffer, from the mostly pro-government SGP party, warned that things could go completely wrong for this cabinet. If the senators reject the budget, the old budget will remain in place, including the investments of the previous cabinet. “Is the coalition taking that into consideration?”

Coordinated
Certainly, but there was little evidence of that on Tuesday evening when the coalition parties (PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB) coordinated their defence of the budget. They passed on all questions about political feasibility to the Minister of Education, Eppo Bruins. He should see for himself how to gain support.

The opposition parties could hardly believe that. Is PVV continuing to drive into a blind wall, asked Jan Paternotte (D66) to MP Patrick van der Hoeff. "I am not afraid of a blind wall," the PVV member replied. VVD, NSC and BBB were also asked similar questions and they gave similar answers.

The four government parties were unable to provide any substantiation for their cutbacks in the debate, except that they would like to allocate additional money for defence and purchasing power. It remains unclear why they are taking that money from education and research.

They emphasised that more money is not always the solution to education problems. Despite all the investments of the past few years, there is still a shortage of teachers and reading skills are in a bad state. If money does not demonstrably help, the coalition parties think one might as well take it away.

The only problem is that even Minister Eppo Bruins does not agree with this. He has called his own cutbacks ugly and painful. Paternotte (D66) said: "We are in a situation where not even the minister defends the budget, but rather regrets the budget."

The coalition parties, however, stood firm behind their cabinet's budget and only said that cutbacks always hurt. Harmen Krul (CDA) did his utmost to hear which points the government party NSC found difficult to stomach, but even after two attempts, MP Aant Jelle Soepboer did not want to say anything about it. The Christian Union also tried to get something out of them, mentioning social service time. "We are not cutting back on the entire social service time, but the subsidy on it," Soepboer replied.

On Thursday, Minister Eppo Bruins will answer all the questions from the House of Representatives. The biggest question is whether there will be a compromise by then.