Universities go to court to get cuts off the table

Tilburg University and Radboud University are incorporating legal proceedings against the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), due to the cutbacks in higher education. They argue that Minister Eppo Bruins (OCW, NSC) breaks agreements from 2022 about extra investments in starters and stimulation fairs for young scientists. With that they try to stop the cutbacks.

Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), the umbrella organization of the universities, announced this on Tuesday afternoon, immediately after the Senate had approved the 2025 budget of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

The expectation is that more universities will go to court to challenge the breaking of the 2022 administrative agreement. In that year, the then education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf (D66) promised that the universities would get 300 million euros a year to give university teachers the opportunity to do research in addition to their reading task. Dijkgraafs successor Bruins put a line through those plans.

According to his own words, he had to make choices. The Cabinet’s cut -back plans, which were included in the Outline Agreement, originally stated that money for ‘sector plans’ would be deleted. That turned out to be twelve hundred university jobs. Bruins chose to cut back on research fairs instead. But the universities had already started assigning the stock markets. They therefore start procedures because of the lower funding they now receive.

Breach of trust

Bruins recognized during the budget debate that there is a breach of trust with the universities. Yet he continues the cuts. According to UNL chairman Caspar van den Berg, this stands in the way of future agreements between universities and the government. « If the minister does not want to come back to this, the judge’s opinion is necessary to recover from the government’s trust. »

Various opposition parties asked critical questions to the minister about the legality of the cutbacks. CDA, GroenLinks-PvdA, ChristenUnie and D66, among others, wanted to know whether he had obtained legal advice on his decision to break the administrative agreement. In addition, the support of the ChristenUnie and the CDA was at stake. For Bruins, it was crucial to get his budget through the Senate.

Senator Tineke Huizinga-Heringa (ChristenUnie) said on Tuesday prior to the vote on the budget that the minister did not succeed in removing the doubts about the legality of the cutbacks. Yet her party thought that was too little reason to vote against. The CDA also saw « insufficient starting points to judge that the OCW budget is unlawful or impracticable, » said Senator Theo Rietkerk. He added that « repair of legislation » can always take place if the judge judges otherwise.

OPNL, GroenLinks-PvdA, D66, Volt, SP and Party for the Animals voted against the budget. Moties To mitigate the cutbacks, it didn’t make it.

Correction 8 April 2025: An earlier version of this message said that CDA, PvdA, ChristenUnie and CDA, among others, wanted to know whether Minister Bruins had collected legal advice. ‘PvdA’ had to be GroenLinks-PvdA and the second ‘CDA’ ‘D66’. That has been adjusted above.

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