Cabinet plans to cut 25,000 central government jobs by 2035
State secretary Eric van der Burg says central government will shrink by about 25,000 full-time posts over several years. The police and armed forces are exempt, and the split per ministry will come in the spring budget update.
The cabinet expects central government to have about 25,000 fewer full-time civil service jobs by 2035 than it has now. State secretary Eric van der Burg (VVD) announced the plan on Monday in a progress letter to the Tweede Kamer.
The cabinet must save €900m on central government in 2027, rising to €3.5bn from 2035. The figure of 25,000 is an estimate in full-time equivalents (FTEs), spread over several years.
Van der Burg wrote that most civil servants work in implementation, so a large part of the target will fall on implementing organisations. The armed forces and police are exempt.
We cannot keep doing what we did. With too many rules, exceptions and procedures, we sometimes make it needlessly hard for ourselves to solve problems.Eric van der Burg, state secretary
The cabinet wants a simpler, smarter and smaller government, which Van der Burg calls a major task. In time there will be one workplace for every two civil servants.
The government must also scrap or simplify at least 500 rules a year, half for citizens and professionals and half for entrepreneurs. The cabinet will look at reforming the Wet open overheid, the freedom of information law, so that it needs fewer civil servants to run. Details will follow in 2027.
The Voorjaarsnota, the spring budget update, will set out in about six months how many jobs go at each ministry.
Within two years, the cabinet will work out a legal solution for sharing data between government organisations, so that services can be offered proactively. It will present goals and savings plans for the use of AI in the first quarter of 2027.
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Guide: Box 3: Dutch tax on savings and investments in 2026
Tweede Kamer
The House of Representatives, the lower and more powerful house of the Dutch parliament. Its 150 members are elected directly; it can amend bills and holds the cabinet to account.
Woo (Wet open overheid)
The Wet open overheid is the Dutch Open Government Act, the Netherlands' freedom of information law. It gives members of the public the right to request documents held by government bodies and requires those bodies to answer within set time limits, with some exceptions such as personal data and state secrets. It also obliges public bodies to publish certain documents on their own initiative, which is why it shapes how much information government makes available and how much work that takes for civil servants.
Voorjaarsnota
The spring budget update is the document in which the Dutch cabinet sets out its budget changes to Parliament each spring. It covers new spending, savings and the reallocation of money between ministries for the current year and the years after. It matters because it is the main mid-year budget decision, alongside the budget presented on Prinsjesdag in September, and it is where the government decides how its overall spending limits are divided across ministries.