PvdA and JA21 are against the ‘decoupling’ of the AOW, party leaders Lilianne Ploumen and Joost Eerdmans say news hour. This puts the measure from the coalition agreement in jeopardy.
PvdA and JA21 play an important role in the opposition, because they can help the coalition parties to obtain a majority in the Senate with their own hands. The coalition parties have 32 seats there, six too few to reach a majority. Without support from JA21 (seven seats), PvdA (six seats), or from GroenLinks, with which the latter party is involved, the chance that the measure will pass the Senate is small.
Three billion a year
The decoupling of the AOW has to do with the planned step-by-step increase of the minimum wage by 7.5 percent. This also increases the level of benefits, because it is linked to the level of the minimum wage. The law currently stipulates that, in addition to the benefit, the AOW must also increase by the same amount as the minimum wage. But the government wants to get rid of that.
By decoupling the most expensive benefit, the AOW, the government hopes to limit the costs. “That saves the state treasury more than three billion euros a year,” says economist Mathijs Bouman. “That is about the same as the entire amount that the cabinet will spend extra on Defence.”
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no crumbs
Yet the PvdA and JA21 will not support the measure. “People who have worked hard for our security, work that we now find indispensable, will not benefit from this plan if the minimum wage rises,” says Ploumen. “I think that’s the ax to the root of solidarity. I think it’s unfair to throw billions away and at the same time leave old-age pensioners with an ever-emptier wallet.”
Also for JA21 party leader Eerdmans, agreeing to the measure is in principle unnegotiable. “People who have worked hard all their lives, are married and have a small pension lose something of a thousand euros per year. These are people who cannot do anything about their own position, because they have already stopped working and are depending on their pension.”
Only with very large commitments is the door ajar for JA21, says Eerdmans. “If the introduction of the strict Danish migration model comes on the table, then we can talk. But we won’t do it for a few crumbs. And I don’t expect anything like that to come to us.”
Moving on to the future
There is a good chance that lack of support from the opposition will become a problem for more topics from the coalition agreement, says political reporter Arjan Noorlander. “In order not to get into a fight among themselves, the cabinet has put many plans on the table that cost a lot of money, but they were not allowed to lead to all kinds of annoying tax increases. That is why the bill is largely deferred to the future.”
“But that also means that if opposition parties have wishes, this will immediately cost money that cannot be passed on to the future. This applies to the decoupling of the state pension, but also, for example, to the surrender of the gas contract with Germany, where already discussion about.”
Unrest has also arisen among the supporters of the coalition parties about the plan. On Monday, the elderly networks of VVD, CDA and D66 sent an angry letter to their own parliamentary groups requesting that the measure be reversed.
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