Senate approves additional budget cuts

On Tuesday, the Senate approved the supplementary education budget for 2025, which includes over 400 million euros in additional cuts. A motion by D66 and other parties to scrap these cuts was rejected.

In mid-October, opposition parties in the Senate voiced their concerns about the ‘irreversible damage’ that the cuts to education and research would cause. Together with GroenLinks-PvdA, SP and the Partij voor de Dieren, D66 submitted a motion to at least reverse the new cuts from the this year’s spring budget, but it failed to gain a majority on Tuesday.

The supplementary budget for the ministry of Education, Culture  and Science for 2025 was then passed by the Senate. Only GroenLinks-PvdA, D66, Volt and the SP voted against it.

For the Christen-Unie, the abolition of the equal opportunities in education scheme was the main objection to the ministry budget. “We could not have supported it with that included”, said senator Talsma. “But now that the cabinet has proposed scrapping that particular cut, we’re voting in favour of the bill after all.”

Devil’s dilemma

The Partij voor de Dieren, co-submitter of the rejected motion, also ended up voting in favour of the supplementary budget. Senator Visseren described it as a ‘devil’s dilemma’. The OCW budget also includes the Kostić amendment, which phases out subsidies for experiments on apes. “Unlike an ape that dies during an animal test, the education cuts are not irreversible”, she explained.