Possibly as many as 20 ministers and 10 state secretaries in new cabinet

It seems to be getting busy on the platform: the coalition is thinking of a new cabinet with twenty ministers and ten state secretaries. That reports The Telegraph. “Presumably so many ministers are chosen because the tasks that a minister has today are quite heavy,” says parliamentary reporter for Elsevier Weekblad Carla Joosten in Good morning Netherlands.

“A lot of issues are very problematic,” she continues. “Think of nitrogen, immigration policy and of course corona. Two or three ministers will also end up at Public Health.”

The parties also see for themselves who will receive how many posts. For example, according to current plans, the VVD would have eight ministers, D66 six, and the CDA has signed up for four posts. There will be two people from the CU and two people from the CU on the platform. So a total of twenty ministers, compared to the sixteen that Rutte III cabinet started in 2017.

Changing proportions

This also shifts the relations between the parties. In the previous cabinet, VVD had six ministers, D66 and CDA four and CU two. The CDA therefore loses considerable influence in the Council of Ministers with the new division. This is also compatible with the election results: in 2017 D66 and CDA still had the same number of seats, but now the Democrats (24 seats) are a lot bigger in the House of Representatives than the Christian Democrats (now 14 seats).

Ten secretaries of state are expected to attend, for whom a similar ratio has already been signed. Four for the VVD, three for D66, two for the CDA and one for CU.

‘Good if pressure is distributed’

The exact distribution can still change at the end of the negotiations. In any case, D66 MEP Samira Rafaela thinks it is good that more ministers and state secretaries are added. “Especially when it comes to the workload. We have recently seen how incredibly tough it can be,” she says in Good morning Netherlands. “It is good that the workload is distributed in this way, so that I think it is also done better and more attention can be paid to the topics that are currently at play.”

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By: Editors

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