The salaries of all civil servants are set to be frozen for a further period in order to help the government meet eurozone monetary union rules, the Telegraaf reports on Friday, quoting coalition sources.

One source told the paper the pay freeze would be ‘unavoidable’ if the Netherlands is to find savings of at least €9bn in order to reduce the budget deficit to agreed levels. A 2.5 year pay freeze would generate €2.5bn, the paper said.
A freeze in social security benefits and pensions would generate a further €2.7bn.
Negotiations
The paper says the leaders of the coalition parties will be looking to find savings to generate some €12bn, to offset the negative effect of the cuts on economic growth. This is on top of the €18bn in cuts agreed when the government took office.
Prime minister Mark Rutte, CDA leader Maxime Verhagen and PVV leader Geert Wilders will start negotiations on reducing the budget deficit next week.
On Thursday, the government’s macro-economic think tank CPB said the deficit is set to reach 4.5% next year, well above the monetary union limit of 3%. Officials in Brussels said they expected the Netherlands to comply with the rules in its role as one of the biggest supporters of budgetary discipline.
Housing market
Some 75% of the population support changes to the mortgage tax relief system, including scrapping it altogether, according to a poll of 25,000 for television current affairs show EenVandaag about the cuts.
But voters are not in favour of cuts in healthcare spending, increasing patient fees or reducing coverage in the basic health insurance package, the poll showed.