Dutch politics as usual
In proper Dutch fasion the cabinet has crashed and burned. So now the Queen gets to do her job again for a bit – on her skiing holiday…
That’s not the only bad-time aspect to these, by Dutch standard, normal political proceedings though. The new elections are sheduled for may, there are local council elections in march. I think it’ll make the two bodies of government too much alike, even though local parties are mostly incarnations of the national ones in name and logo only. A few rather more interesting topics will have to be dealt with much, much later such as the whole retirement at 67 thing and plenty of other things. Everyone is now happily assuming that a new cabinet can be in place in august or september. That’s not bloody likely though. Last time the formation of the coalition took about seven months. This time around I suspect the vote will be split even more. The formation should take even longer. That’s one way to get out of taking hard decisions half the people of the country won’t like of course.
February 22nd, 2010 at 19:21
Is their a logic behind retirement at 67? The “accepted norm” in Europe is 65, or that’s what I’ve gathered, so I figure the extra two years are meaning something?
February 22nd, 2010 at 20:16
Basically it suspends the statefunded pensions for 2 years but also allows 2 years more taxation if they do still work at 67.
It frees up money on both ends to keep the state pension as it is somewhat affordable. With an ever aging population this is becoming a severe expense for the Dutch government and it needs new legislation before it’s too late. It has been ignored for some decade too long anyway.