The Senate has voted to back the government’s cutbacks to education and research. Doubts about the legality of some of the cuts were not enough to stall the budget. The universities now plan to take their case to court.

The Senate vote on the budget for education, culture and science went as expected. The coalition parties voted in favour, as did those they struck a deal with: JA21 and the three Christian parties. 50Plus, the party representing pensioners’ interests, also lent its support.

The remaining parties voted against. Ahead of the vote, Paul van Meenen (D66) denounced the budget as ‘an attack on the future of our young people’, adding ‘That may sound dramatic, but this is a dramatic situation.’

Several universities now plan to take the government to court to fight cuts totalling more than 200 million euros affecting start-up and incentive grants. Tilburg University and Radboud University have already been named as plaintiffs.

Unlawful

The universities’ case is based on a long-term administrative agreement which they signed with the previous government in return for additional funding. The current government has since reneged on that agreement. In the budget debate, senators also raised questions about this issue.

Explaining her party’s decision to back the budget, Tineke Huizinga (ChristenUnie) noted, ‘The minister has not been able to dispel my party’s doubts about whether cancelling the administrative agreement is unlawful.’ Even so, ChristenUnie backed the budget, believing the legality issue to be relatively minor: it represents 200 million out of a total budget of over 50 billion euros.

Motion

However, ChristenUnie did back an opposition motion calling for the administrative agreement to stand. Not that there was much at stake: it was likely from the outset that the motion would fail to convince other parties.

The opposition’s aim was to win over the pro-government alliance of JA21, CDA, SGP and ChristenUnie, and perhaps more parties, as the motion gave them the option of rejecting a small part of the budget rather than voting down the budget as a whole. It called for the government ’to fully implement the 2025 administrative agreement and enter into consultations with the institutions regarding any deviation from the agreement in years to come.’

‘The future of our children and grandchildren is being axed’

Opposition to the government’s policy continues unabated, and not just in court. The Dutch Student Union has already announced a new wave of protests, stating “The future of our children and grandchildren is being axed.” Trade union FNV, which called the approval of the budget “a pitch-black day for education in the Netherlands”, is focusing its efforts on local strikes and demonstrations, starting in Rotterdam today and Tilburg on Thursday.

There is still plenty to fight for. The current government is prone to internal strife and the four coalition parties now face the challenge of settling their differences in a wide-ranging spring budget memorandum with all its windfalls and shortfalls.