Jetten cabinet plans €3.4bn cut to civil service
The cabinet wants to cut €3.4bn from a civil service of about 160,000 full-time jobs, and State Secretary Eric van der Burg will set out how at the end of this month.
The Jetten cabinet wants to cut €3.4bn from the civil service, which has grown in recent years to about 160,000 full-time jobs (fte). State Secretary Eric van der Burg (VVD, responsible for an efficient government) will present his plan to the Tweede Kamer at the end of this month.
Working more efficiently is not expected to be enough. The Centraal Planbureau calculated earlier this year that greater efficiency can save no more than €200m. The Algemene Rekenkamer warned this autumn that the cabinet must make hard choices, or the cuts will fail.
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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.
CPB (Centraal Planbureau)
The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, the independent government agency that makes the official economic forecasts used for the budget.
Algemene Rekenkamer
The Netherlands Court of Audit is the independent body that checks how the national government spends public money and whether its policies achieve what they set out to do. It reports its findings to the House of Representatives and the Senate, and its reports regularly feed into political debates about government budgets and spending.