Gov't implementing agencies not "spared" from budget cuts after all
In the coalition agreement, the PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB agreed to “spare” government implementation agencies, like benefits agency UWV and student financing agency DUO, from budget cuts. But in practice, the majority of Ministries are planning cuts on these organizations that implement the government’s policy, NOS reports after surveying the MInistries.
The coalition parties want to cut spending on civil service by 22 percent. They’re planning a 240 million euro cut next year, and ultimately want to cut 1 billion euros from this budget. However, they agreed that this must not come at the expense of implementing policy, and implementation organizations will therefore be spared from budget cuts.
Despite this, Minister Eelco Heinen of Finance said during a parliamentary debate last week that Ministries can cut on implementation in order to achieve the target of 22 percent.
The Ministry of Social Affairs plans to do just that. A spokesperson told NOS that the Ministry is in talks with the UWV and the Social Insurance Bank (SVB) about achieving cuts with simplified rules and more efficient work.
A spokesperson for the UWV confirmed that there are talks about how the agency can “make a contribution” to lower expenditure from 2026. The benefits agency sees some possibilities. “For example, by simplifying laws and regulations, we can both achieve savings and improve services to citizens.”
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has instructed its implementing agencies, which include the Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM) and the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), to all work more efficiently to realize a cut of 0.5 percent. A Ministerial spokesperson would not call this a budget cut, but the agencies are expected to make a contribution.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security, and Nature will cut the budget of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) by 0.5 percent from next year. The NVWA monitors the safety of products and inspects farms and slaughterhouses, among other things. It has been struggling with shortages for some time.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, which covers DUO, said it hasn’t made any decisions yet but is urging its agencies to consider “whether they see opportunities to carry out work more intelligently and save costs.”
The Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Public Health told NOS that they do not yet know whether their implementation agencies will face budget cuts.
The implementation of policy by agencies is under pressure because the rules are often too complicated and there are not enough people, the Court of Audit warned again last year. The parliamentary inquiry into the benefits scandal also concluded that previous cutbacks in implementation did not work out well.
Maarten de Jong, a university lecturer in public finance at Erasmus University, is skeptical about the proposed cutbacks. According to him, implementation agencies have “insidiously” become impoverished “by gradually reducing” budgets “a little bit” at a time. He worries that the same will happen now.
“A little bit every year, without it seeming to hurt. Then you notice that you are getting thinner. Until something unexpected happens, then you have no room to tackle a problem.”
Incidentally, the largest part of the budget cuts will happen at the Ministries themselves. Next year, there will be cutbacks on things like communication, external hiring of staff, and the automatic replacement of departing civil servants. Some Ministries will also cut back on parties and lunches.
