Can education minister Eppo Bruins cancel an administrative agreement with the universities and cut more than 200 million euros in funding just because he wants to tighten the purse strings? That was the question put to the Senate one last time yesterday, ahead of next week’s vote on the education budget for 2025.

In 2022, the previous government signed an administrative agreement guaranteeing additional higher education funding for a period of ten years, which has now been scrapped by the current cabinet.

Even the previous education minister, Robbert Dijkgraaf (D66), has commented on the situation, which is highly unusual in Dutch politics. He told the Volkskrant this week that the “letter and spirit” of the agreement were intended to ensure a long-term commitment.

Opposing legal opinions

Not all senators were keen to continue last week’s budget debate. “We have doubts about the usefulness of this third term, because this issue is not going to be resolved”, SGP senator Marc de Vries said before the debate in a meeting of the Senate education committee. “There are opposing legal opinions and I don’t think we’re going to resolve this matter this afternoon, even with longer speaking slots.” VVD, BBB, PVV and JA21 did not request speaking time.

The debate did go ahead that afternoon, and it soon became clear that the Christian parties and JA21, all part of the opposition, were willing to help the government to a majority, as expected. These parties struck a deal in the House of Representatives to reduce the budget cuts in education and research from over 2 billion euros to about 1.2 billion.

But what about the administrative agreement? After some persuasion, the CDA no longer sees any legal problem in cancelling it, and the ChristenUnie is not standing in the way either. Those in favour of terminating the agreement argue that it’s just one budget cut, and that it’s only a small part of the total research budget.

Violation

Some opposition parties pulled out all the stops to persuade their colleagues to change their minds. GroenLinks-PvdA pointed to all the agreements currently in the pipeline, such as the healthcare agreement, the welfare agreement and the new education agreement. Can this government be trusted to keep its word when it’s ready to break promises the moment it wants to make budget cuts?

Meanwhile, the universities are expected to take legal action to overturn the cuts, and some experts say they could be successful. But D66 senator Paul van Meenen says the Senate shouldn’t leave issues like this to the courts. “If we do that, we no longer have a right to exist. This is what we’re here for.”

Since the budget won’t be rejected in its entirety, D66, GL-PvdA, Volt, OPNL, SP and PvdD have jointly tabled a motion on the violation of the administrative agreement, calling on the government to only reverse this part of the cuts.

Right to change policy

Minister Bruins advised against this motion, reiterating his position that a new government simply has the right to change policy and adjust funding.

While he did acknowledge that the universities had been promised extra resources, he argued that these were not allocated through targeted grants. Rather, the total amount of funding was increased, with institutions receiving lump sums to spend as they saw fit. This alone made the agreements non-binding, according to Bruins. A grant can be reclaimed if it’s not spent properly, he reasons, which is not possible with general funding, as this is spent at the discretion of the institutions.

Isn’t Bruins worried about the erosion of trust in government? He does recognise that ‘binding’ agreements were made, and that his predecessor, Robbert Dijkgraaf, intended for the additional funding to be available long-term. “However, that doesn’t mean that the agreements are legally enforceable.”

Trust

Opposition parties flocked to the interruption microphone, but their barrage of questions didn’t seem to faze the minister. He acknowledged that the institutions’ trust had been violated, “both on a human and institutional level”, and left it at that.

The SP has called for a roll-call vote on the budget, so that each senator must personally vote ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. This vote is scheduled for Tuesday 8 April.