In mid-October, opposition parties in the Senate expressed concern about the “irreversible damage” the cuts to education and research would cause. Together with GroenLinks-PvdA, SP and Partij voor de Dieren, D66 submitted a motion to scrap at least the new cuts from the Spring Memorandum, but it failed to win a majority on Tuesday.
Subsequently, the supplementary budget for education, culture and science (OCW) for 2025 was passed by the Senate. Only GroenLinks-PvdA, D66, Volt and SP voted against the budget.
For ChristenUnie, the abolition of the equality of opportunity in education scheme was the main objection to the OCW budget. “We couldn’t have agreed to that”, says Senator Talsma. “But now that the government has put forward proposals to reverse this cut, we’re voting in favour of the bill after all.”
Almost impossible choice
Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals), one of the parties that submitted the rejected motion, nevertheless voted in favour of the supplementary budget. Senator Visseren spoke of an “almost impossible choice”, as the OCW budget also includes the Kostić amendment, which phases out subsidies for experiments on monkeys. “Unlike a monkey that dies during an experiment, the education cuts aren’t irreversible”, she explained.