He acknowledges that the Netherlands had chaotic years with the corona crisis and the energy crisis, after which the Dutch budget had to be adjusted very quickly and the price ceiling was set. “It was a turbulent budgeting process,” Heinen says. “Where the Cabinet spent a lot of money before permission was given.”
“Public finances really need to improve”
Although Heinen believes that in a crisis situation one must always choose between speed and accuracy, and that speed was needed at the time of the energy crisis to help people in their purchasing power. “But I think those crisis years are behind us now, so public finances really need to improve.”
Too late
If it’s up to Heinen, finances should have been in much better order. Mainly because the House normally has to give formal approval for large expenditures. Though he believes crises—like a bank crash over a weekend—shouldn’t be talked about for weeks, Heinen notes that in 2022, there will have been a lot of spending that has invoked an exception in the law. “Whereas in reality you have to ask yourself if there really was a crisis,” he says. ‘For example, buying ventilators for schools. You can just precede it with a proper parliamentary process.’
Economic crisis
However, Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag is optimistic about the future. Even the contraction of the Dutch economy in the first quarter seems to have little effect on this. More so because he argues that there must be two consecutive quarters of contraction before a recession occurs. Heinen: ‘That’s actually true, because a quarter says nothing about the performance of a full year. But I’m more critical of the competition when it comes to budget deficits.”
Yesterday, when presenting the spring memorandum, the State Council ruled that the cabinet is ‘skimming very close to the protective barrier’, but according to Heinen this is mostly mild language. “I’d say we’re already driving with a wheel on the verge,” he says. ‘So we really need to take a more critical look at spending. We have these budget deficits in a boom period, so it only takes a small setback to derail the entire budget. I find that very worrying.’