Strict rules mean few students got energy bill relief under program set up for them

The 35 million euros the Cabinet earmarked to compensate students for the increased energy costs hardly reached the target group. Most students who applied for this support did not meet the strict conditions, the Volksrkant reports.

To qualify for the scheme, set up after the government excluded students from the energy bill allowance for low-income households, students must earn less than a maximum percentage of the social minimum - the income below which people qualify for welfare benefits. That percentage varies per city, and students’ loans from the education institute DUO count toward their income. They must also have independent accommodation with their own energy contract.

The municipalities of Utrecht, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Wageningen received several dozen applications from students for energy bill support. They rejected a significant number of them, often because students earned too much or couldn’t sufficiently show that the increased costs put them in financial trouble, the Volkskrant found.

Groningen received over 600 applications and approved 144 of them. Maastricht, the only municipality to allow international students to apply for support, approved 242 of the 622 applications it received.

The municipality of Utrecht told the Volkskrant it used the remaining amount - about 2 million of the 2.6 million euros it received for this scheme - to help low-income households. “We then help the people of Utrecht who are in the most vulnerable situation,” alderman Linda Voortman (Work and Income) told the newspaper. “Their situation is different: they cannot earn or borrow unlimited money from DUO.”

Student unions are furious that the money set aside to help students reached so little of them. “Many students started working extra in recent months to cover their costs, so now they do not meet the scheme's conditions,” Annemarie Herbschleb of the Groninger Studentenbond told the newspaper. “That feels crooked.”

Herbschleb called on the government to relax the rules for this compensation, for example, by not counting students’ DUO loans toward their income. “Only then will we feel heard,” she said.