It was agreed in the coalition agreement to collect the money from municipalities. But that led to a lot of resistance from municipalities and from various opposition parties in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Contribution
The cabinet has agreed to find the money and not to take it away from the municipalities. The responsible State Secretary Maarten van Ooijen must investigate whether it is possible to introduce a personal contribution for youth care. It is still unclear exactly what that will look like.
He must also consider whether it is possible to cancel treatments that are currently being paid for from the youth care fund. Youth care costs about 6 billion a year.
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Support opposition needed in the Senate
By scrapping the cutbacks, the cabinet is making a peace offering to opposition parties GroenLinks and PvdA, among others. The government needs the support of the opposition to get all kinds of measures through the Senate. The coalition does not have a majority in the Senate.
For the same reason, the cabinet previously decided to link the state pension to the minimum wage. The coalition agreement still stated that the coalition wanted to remove that link.
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In the second week of May, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister Sigrid Kaag (Finance) will try to get support for the plans from the opposition. According to insiders, discussions with GroenLinks, PvdA and JA21 are in the making.
The cancellation of the cuts was not announced because Rutte and Kaag had hoped to surprise the opposition with this goodwill gesture.
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