New Cabinet must defend "bags of money" it plans to spend in parliamentary debate

The opposition will ask the Cabinet to explain the "big bags of money" it plans to spend in the coming years. Parties from left to right want to know about the concrete solutions that the Rutte IV plan to find for nitrogen, climate, and housing, for example. In addition, there are concerns about the high costs of those plans. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the lower house of the Dutch parliament will debate the government statement of the Rutte IV Cabinet. 

The largest opposition party, PVV, already has no confidence in the new Cabinet, said leader Geert Wilders. He said he has "hard opposition" to the plans for the state pension, immigration, purchasing power, and healthcare. The Cabinet has "wrong priorities" in nitrogen and climate, he said. "The Cabinet has to go. Preferably tomorrow!" Wilders said the day before the debate. He immediately announced a motion of no confidence against the Cabinet. 

The SGP, JA21, and the Van Haga Group also object to the significant expenditure on the agenda, which will increase the national debt. Wybren van Haga said that the Cabinet needs more and more money and officials. He speaks of a "new style coup." Like other opposition parties, he wants to know how the Cabinet will ensure that democratic supervision remains possible on the various pots with billions of euros in them. 

The party for the animals PvdD wants to know whether the money made available for the nitrogen problem will provide "a structural solution or a relocation." The party wants the Cabinet to promise to reduce livestock. Volt wants to hear more about plans to strengthen European cooperation, a central point for the party, which entered parliament for the first time last year. Social inequality is also high on the agenda. GroenLinks wants to address this and believes the Cabinet should do more for the climate.

Concerns about the decoupling of the state pension and the minimum wage are widespread, ANP found when talking to the opposition parties. Almost all parties the ANP spoke to want to draw attention to this explicitly. This also applies to the once-person faction Liane den Haan, who presented a petition with 33,000 signatures about this to the responsible State Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Carola Schouten before the debate on Tuesday morning.