The Netherlands: There's a gaping hole in the Mark Rutte national budget

Very bad news for the Netherlands Government of Mark Rutte and his PVV ( Geert Wilders) supporters - there's a gaping hole in the budget and how Rutte will fix it remains a mystery.

€ 9,000,000,000 or €15,000,000,000? the NRC newspaper heads an analysis of macro economic advisory agency CPB’s gloomy budgetary forecast. The government will have to find €9b if the Netherlands is going to conform to the 3 percent budget deficit rule imposed by Brussels. The paper writes that the amount may well climb to €15b because of the costs involved in cutting back.

This may well spell trouble for the Rutte cabinet, writes the paper. The prime minister needs political space in order to keep Wilders on his side. And so the Netherlands, instead of demanding that other European countries to watch their budgets, will have to go to Brussels themselves to beg, cap in hand: ‘Please help us, just this once, we are  not able to meet the new European rules?’

A €15b cutback would mean more expensive health care, a zero increase of civil servants salaries and benefits and that still wouldn’t cover it, the NRC writes.

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