All Dutch will become “slightly” poorer this year. The government cannot mitigate the consequences of the rapid price increases for everyone. Prime Minister Rutte, who responds to the inflation of almost 12 percent† “The fairest message to the Netherlands is that the government cannot solve all of this.”
Inflation has never been this high since 1975, during the time of the oil crisis. The war in Ukraine has increased energy prices even faster and is largely the culprit of the high inflation. The prime minister therefore speaks of “very worrying figures”. We are all really going to feel the effects collectively this year. It will collectively lead to some impoverishment.”
excise duty
Rutte says that the cabinet is doing everything possible to increase the purchasing power of the lowest and middle incomes in particular. Get lower incomes through the municipalities 800 euros Due to the rising energy bill, the excise duty on fuel has decreased as of today and on 1 July the VAT on gas and electricity will go from 21 to 9 percent.
The prime minister speaks of “very large measures”, but tempers possible expectations that the cabinet will make even more money available for this. “As a government, we are not going to compensate for all of this. That is not possible.”
To wish
In two weeks’ time, the cabinet and the coalition parties will examine the adjustment of the current budget. That will be a complicated puzzle, because there are also wishes to spend more money on Defense and to link the state pension fully to the minimum wage.
The government actually did not want the state pension to grow with the planned extra increase in the minimum wage because that would cost an increasing amount of 2.4 to 2.9 billion euros per year. But the Senate and various parties in the House are against this.
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