Still no budget deal after all-night negotiations

The latest round of negotiations for the spring memorandum - the annual update to the national budget - is approaching the 24-hour point, and the PVV, VVD, BBB, and NSC still haven’t reached an agreement. The government wants to discuss the plans in the Council of Ministers tomorrow.

The negotiations started at the Ministry of Finance at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday and went through the night, barring a brief interruption for negotiators to cast their vote in parliament, NOS reports. Late last night, Prime Minister Dick Schoof joined the talks after attending a state banquet with the Sultan of Oman earlier in the evening.

Minister Eelco Heinen of Finance and the four coalition parties have been negotiating the spring memorandum for days. Last week, the PVV and BBB still called it a “huge job” and spoke of an “ocean” of differences between the parties. This week, the tone has been somewhat more positive, but on Monday, the NSC said that little progress had been made and the differences were still huge.

The NSC and BBB both said on Monday that Tuesday’s negotiations must end in an agreement so that the memorandum can be discussed in the Council of Ministers on Thursday. The weekly Cabinet meeting is happening a day early this week due to the Easter holiday on Friday.

Sources around the negotiations told NOS that the Cabinet has found a solution for the 1.2 billion euro gap in the budget left by the opposition blocking a planned VAT hike on books, museums, theaters, and sports. The gap will be filled by reducing income tax by less than planned, the sources said.

But many other issues - extra money for prisons, defense, climate goals, and nitrogen reduction - are still on the table. The parties all also want to improve people’s purchasing power in different ways and haven’t agreed on how to do that.