The Dutch prime minister’s government resigns en bloc after a parliamentary report blamed him for mismanagement of childcare subsidies that bankrupted thousands of migrant families.
The report published at the end of 2020 detailing how the Administration harassed families to return childcare benefits. Rutte has decided to dissolve the Government a few weeks before the March elections.
The text that has uncovered these practices reveals that government agencies accused 20,000 parents of fraud in court and forced them to return the benefits they had received for their children, subsidies that had been granted to them in accordance with the law. However, in many cases the fraud alleged by the Administration was limited to some incomplete papers, while in others the families received more money than, a priori, they should have due to fluctuations in their income.
Although the alleged fraud was apparently not caused by them, the families were required to repay the money, while many of the low-income families had already spent it, leaving them verge of bankruptcy and forced them to take out loans to be able to meet the payments.
In addition, the report also reflected that 11,000 families had been subjected to additional controls because they had a second nationality, which goes against the prohibition of discrimination in the Dutch Constitution, according to the Dutch News channel.
Since the case was uncovered, the Government has apologized and has offered compensation of around 30,000 euros per family, however the opposition and the victims have asked the Government to resign.
Just two months before the legislative elections, the cabinet led by the liberal Mark Rutte assumed political responsibility for what happened, considered by the press to be the biggest political and administrative scandal of the Rutte legislatures, at the head of successive governments since 2010.
The Executive will remain as interim government until the elections on March 17, which will allow it to continue managing the pandemic and applying the necessary restrictions as part of the current confinement, which keeps all non-essential activity closed until at least February 9.
In principle, the resignation should not affect Rutte’s electoral expectations, since he leads the voting intention polls for the next elections by a great advantage as leader of the conservative Popular Party for Freedom and Democracy.