According to Jelmer Vierstra, alderman for finance in Woerden, the money worries are real. “This problem occurs in almost every municipality in the Netherlands. There are real concerns about 2026 and 2027,” he says. Utrecht alderman Susanne Schilderman also looks gloomily at the future. “Utrecht has a balanced budget up to and including 2025, but I can already predict that it will no longer be balanced in the next two years.”
Showing everyone that you cannot manage the budget: ‘If many municipalities do that, it is a clear signal to the government’
