The agreement put together by the four coalition parties over the past five months covers 26 pages and is made up of what the new partners say is the headline strategy. 

Some parts of the document, entitled Hoop, lef en trots (hope, guts, and pride) are thin on facts, others go into fine detail about such items as manure. But what will the government plans mean for you personally?

Here’s a list of some of the measures which will affect you as a “foreigner” in the Netherlands, and as a resident.

Rules affecting internationals

• There will be new, tougher rules for bringing in non-EU nationals on highly-skilled migrant visas
  
• More limits will be imposed on foreign student numbers, by boosting the number of Dutch courses, bringing in maximum numbers for foreign students and increasing university fees for non-EU students
  
• It will be made harder for EU students to claim a Dutch grant
• Knowledge of the Holocaust will become a compulsory part of the integration process
  
• It will only be possible to become Dutch after 10 years and if legally possible, people will have to give up their foreign nationality to do so
• At least Level B1 will become the standard language demand for naturalisation
• “The Netherlands will be critical about further expansion of the EU and no concessions will be done to the criteria for membership”

Money

• The own risk element in healthcare will be halved from 2027 to €165
• Tax on income will be cut “for example by introducing a new income tax bracket”
• There will be more measures to stimulate the use of permanent job contracts
• Organised childcare to become “virtually free”
• Home owners with solar panels will no longer be able to deduct the energy they feed back into the national grid from their energy bills from 2027
• Unemployment benefit (WW) will be cut from two years to 18 months
• No changes planned to mortgage tax relief and there will be a limit to local tax increases for home owners
• Value added tax on hotel stays will go back to 21% but not on campsites
• Value added tax will rise to 21% on theatre and museum tickets but not cinemas and amusement parks
• The tax on gambling will go up from 30.5% to 37.8%
• Slow students who take more than a year extra to finish their degrees will face higher fees

Other issues

• In education, teaching methods “must be proved to be effective and politically neutral”
• Funding for creating broad streams in the first years of secondary school will be scrapped
• The use of English will be reduced at universities and colleges
• Where possible, 130 kph will become the standard speed on the roads
• Heat pumps will not be compulsory in private homes and subsidies for electric cars will be scrapped in 2025
• Measures will be taken to encourage the development of more rental property and to encourage private landlords
• New legal anchors will be introduced to make it possible to subdivide existing homes into flats, boost generation-wide living and flat sharing, as well as repurposing existing buildings