The Netherlands is no longer one of the five best performing economies in the world, according to the World Economic Forum's rankings. In this year's ranking, the Netherlands came in sixth place, dropping two spots from last year's fourth, AD reports.
The best performing economy of the 140 economies tested is the United States. Singapore came in second place, followed by Germany and Switzerland. Japan completes the top five.
The government and the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, Friesland and Gelderland will sign a covenant this week that will make Nedersaksisch an official, independent and full part of the Dutch language. In the covenant the government promises to protect and promote Nedersaksisch, known as Low Saxon in English, NOS reports.
Low Saxon is spoken in Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, the northeast Veluwe, the Achterhoek and in Oost- and Weststellingwerf. The official recognition comes with money for language projects, and for schools that want to promote a dialect in Lower Saxon.
The primary school teachers behind trade union PO in Actie is calling for a national strike involving all government departments on October 2nd. They want police officers, nurses, Defense personnel and teachers to strike together in The Hague, they wrote in an open letter, NOS reports.
The government is structurally allocating an extra 100 million euros for making social rental homes more sustainable. Housing corporations will receive this amount annually starting next year, sources around the cabinet told RTL Nieuws.
The extra investment will officially be announced on Budget Day, on September 20th, according to the broadcaster. In the coalition agreement the government already promised housing corporations 100 million euros structurally to make their homes more sustainable.
Relatives of unsolved murders in the Netherlands started a petition calling on the government to hire more detectives so that the police can pay more attention to these cold cases. The petition asks the government for a "stronger and more convincing approach" to cold cases and "more well-equipped police teams", NOS reports.
The Netherlands counts around a thousand murder cases that haven't been solved. There are also around 800 other serious violent crimes in which no arrests were made.
On average 1 in 3 Dutch workers stay with the same employer for ten years or longer, according to figures Statistics Netherlands released on Monday. This happens especially often in the government - 58.9 percent of officials work for the government for at least 10 years.
The government's plans on how to change the new law for the Dutch intelligence services after a majority voted against it in a referendum, leaked on Thursday night. The changes are "mostly cosmetic" and don't do justice the results of the advisory referendum, according to privacy organization Bits of Freedom, NOS reports.
For the first time since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, more people in the Netherlands are positive about the development of the country than are negative, according to a report by social and cultural planning office SCP. The Dutch are less worried about the economy and have more confidence in politics and the judiciary, RTL Nieuws reports.
It seems unlikely that a plan to ban firecrackers before New Year's will be implemented. A majority in parliament is against the plan, doubting how effective it will be in reducing the number of fireworks incidents in the Netherlands every New Year's, NOS reports after speaking with sources around the government.
Adopted children from Sri Lanka and Indonesia filed a lawsuit against the Dutch government over errors in their adoption procedures in the 1980's. They want the government to compensate the high costs they're incurring in the search for their origin and biological parents, according to a Zembla broadcast on Wednesday, NU.nl reports.
Last year Zembla reported that adoption files of children from Sri Lanka and Indonesia, among others, were falsified on a large scale and that biological parents did not always give their child up voluntarily.
The Dutch Health Council wants the government to make HIV prevention pill Prep available to population groups that are at higher risk of being infected by the virus, such as homosexual men. According to the Health Council, the pill is medically- and cost effective and should be considered "essential care" for high risk groups, NOS reports.
The Health Council looked into Prep at the request of former Health Minister Edith Schippers.
The port of Rotterdam is unprepared for the upcoming Brexit, and concerns are rising among port companies, Rotterdam entrepreneurs told the Financieele Dagblad.
The biggest problem is a lack of urgency, from the government and other involved authorities like Customs and food and consumer product safety authority ACM, Bas Janssen, director of Rotterdam business organization Deltalinqs, said to the newspaper. "But also from the entrepreneurs themselves. A lot is going to happen when the hard landing that is now expected happens."
Energy giant RWE is calling on the Dutch government to reconstruct the last five coal plants in the Netherlands to run on biomass, instead of closing them completely. According to the company, this will reduce CO2 emissions even more and make best use of existing infrastructure, NU.nl reports.
On Wednesday the court in The Hague ruled against Milieudefensie in a lawsuit filed by the environmental group to force the Dutch government to take more measures to reduce air pollution. According to the court, the Dutch State is taking sufficient measures to improve air quality, NU.nl reports.
Primary school teachers across the Netherlands are striking today for the second time this year. They want the government to push more money into increasing their salaries and decreasing their workload. PO in Actie, the action group that organized the strike, expects that more than 90 percent of primary school teachers are participating, NOS reports.
Donald Trump's decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is "unwise and counterproductive", Minister Halbe Zijlstra of Foreign Affairs said to a delegation of the United States government in Brussels on Wednesday. The EU countries gave this same message to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during lunch. "This is going to reverse the peace process rather than moving it forward", Zijlstra said to NOS.
There are no secret tax agreements between the Royal House and the State, the Van Baalen committee concluded after almost a year of investigation into reports that the government in the 70s made a secret deal with the Royals about an extra compensation for taxes on the royal estate. "There was no secret deal", Carla van Baalen, professor of parliamentary history and committee leader, wrote in a 296 page report, NOS reports.
The VVD, D66 and PvdA want clarification from the government on exactly what role the Netherlands played in the case against former Transavia pilot Julio Poch. After years in custody, the Argentinian-Dutch man was acquitted on Wednesday of involvement in so-called "death flights" during the military dictatorship in Argentina between 1976 and 1983, ANP reports.
The parliament of Sint Maarten, the States, passed a motion of no confidence against six of the seven minsters in its government, including Prime Minister William Marlin on Thursday. The government was disbanded and new elections will be held in January, governor Eugene Holiday announced in a statement. Until then, the island will be ruled by an interim government that still needs to be established, ANP reports.
For the second year in a row, the Netherlands has the most competitive economy in the European Union, and the fourth most competitive economy in the world, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). The Netherlands scored particularly well because of its strong base in, for example, infrastructure and macroeconomic policy, said Erasmus University - the WEF partner organization in the Netherlands, NU.nl reports.
The Dutch government collected 25.3 billion euros in environmental taxes and levies last year, 3 percent more than in 2015, according to figures Statistics Netherlands released on Monday. Households carried almost two thirds of that amount.
The Dutch government is against a parliamentary proposal to only allow police officers in videos and photos if their faces and other identifying features have been blurred out. Minister Stef Blok of Security and Justice called the proposal "undesirable" and "unnecessary" in a letter to the Tweede Kamer on Thursday, NU.nl reports.
The Dutch government decided that Turkish deputy prime minister Tugrul Türkes is not welcome in the Netherlands next week. He was planning to speak in the Orpheus congress center in Apeldoorn on Tuesday during a commemoration of the failed coup in Turkey last year, NOS reports.
"Given the current circumstances in the bilateral relationship between our countries", it is not desirable for Türkes or another member of the Turkish government to come to the Netherlands, the Dutch government decided.
The Dutch state sold another 65 million ABN Amro share certificates, about 7 percent of the shares, the bank announced on Wednesday. The sale made the government 1.5 billion euros, ANP reports.
Following this sale, the Dutch government still holds 63 percent of ABN Amro's shares. The government intends to sell all its shares in the coming years. The next transaction can happen in 60 days at the earliest.
ABN Amro was nationalized during the 2008 credit crisis and returned to the stock exchange in 2015.
