‘Cabinet stretched to breaking point’, the Volkskrant heads its budget analysis on Friday.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and that has certainly been true of the cabinet, the paper writes. ‘Opposition and media rumbles about cuts on culture and other controversial cabinet measures have only served to cement relations between Mark Rutte, Maxime Verhagen and Geert Wilders’.
Test
The new budget could, however, prove a much more severe test to the cabinet’s staying power, the paper predicts. ‘The possible escalation of the euro crisis and the uncertain economic situation in the United States mean that the budget for 2012 is out of date already. The government’s macro economic advisory agency CPB is predicting a ‘black scenario’ in which the budget deficit could go up to 4,4 percent. In that case the government would have to implement millions of euros worth of extra cuts.’
The Volkskrant doubts whether the cabinet will be able to take the strain, especially since the minority cabinet is built on widely different ideologies. The PVV would not look kindly on extra cuts after having compromised on the initial 18bn.
Greek default
Meanwhile, the possibility of a Greek default is looming. Although the aid package does not figure in the budget, Wilders will have a difficult job explaining to his voters that a default and possible extra cuts next year are not connected, the paper says. Rather than defend new cuts, the expectation is that Wilders will use the Greek crisis to distance himself from the government’s austerity measures altogether.
Gloomy
Trouw calls the budget the ‘gloomiest’ of the past few decades. Finance minister Jan Kees de Jager’s warning that ‘another crisis would hit the Dutch economy and the country’s finances extremely hard’ is interpreted by the paper as ‘we will be unable to cope’, in line with the ‘uncompromising way in which De Jager has presented this budget.’
According to Trouw, the paragraph on the importance of the eurozone – the Netherlands profited from the internal market to the tune of an 18 percent export increase, including to Greece – is directed at Wilders to prevail on him not to bail out.
Silver lining
De Pers is not as worried as the other papers, or so it seems. ‘It’s not very nice to have to pay a higher premium for health care and our spending power is down a little bit. But unemployment will remain low in spite of a worldwide fall in growth. That’s nothing to be depressed about’, the paper writes.
There is another silver lining, De Pers points out. ‘The crisis has caused investors to buy up bonds from strong euro countries such as the Netherlands. We are paying a historically low interest rate on an increasingly large part of our national debt which lowers the deficit.’
The paper does warn that the collapse of Greece and its possible exit from the euro could put paid to all of this by embroiling the country in a full blown financial crisis.
The Telegraaf concentrates on the loss of spending power – ‘Budget hits citizens squarely in the pocket’- which the paper gloomily predicts will ‘last for years to come.’