Nicolas Papageorgiou

Review of Kanselarij van de Eerste Minis...

Invariably bad. Poor.

Invariably bad. Poor.

Despite some of the highest public levies in the OECD, our successive governments subscribe to deficit budgets, while the services provided to citizens are average to poor. The royal services are in a particularly worrying state and the infrastructures lack investment.

In contrast, the salaries of civil servants are very high (they pump more than a quarter of public spending at all levels of power), just as the pensions of civil servants are abnormally generous (with equal pay and career a pension much higher than the employees). Subsidies to the economy are much higher than the European average without benefiting our sluggish economic growth. There is therefore much to reduce public spending without degrading the services provided by the State.