Opposition asks Senate to suspend budget cuts

On Tuesday, opposition parties in the Senate expressed concerns about the austerity measures affecting higher education and science. GroenLinks-PvdA, for example, warned that "groundbreaking research will be scrapped, countless jobs are at risk and inequality of opportunity is increasing". The party also pointed to the decline of Dutch universities in international rankings.

The senators debated the Spring Memorandum, which announced further budget cuts to education and research. One of the measures announced is that universities and universities of applied sciences will receive less money to offset inflation.

Damage
D66, GroenLinks-PvdA, SP and Partij voor de Dieren jointly submitted a motion to suspend these cuts in order to prevent "irreversible damage" to education and science. The parties are asking for drastic measures to be postponed until a new cabinet has been formed.

A similar motion was previously submitted to the House of Representatives during a debate on the Budget Memorandum, but it was rejected. The Senate will vote on the new motion on October 28, one day before the elections.

The current cabinet wants vocational and higher education institutions to cover part of the inflation out of their own pockets next year, a method of economising that might be made impossible in the future. A narrow majority in the House of Representatives proposes to look into automatic wage and price adjustments for tertiary education, something that already happens at the primary and secondary education levels. A motion in this regard passed on the last day before the election recess.