The 2022 agreement lists a wide range of financial agreements, about starter’s and incentive grants for academic personnel, about sector plans, practical research in higher professional education, but also about student wellbeing, for example. A deal, signed by both the universities and then Minister of Education Robbert Dijkgraaf.
But then a new cabinet was appointed, and with it, a new Minster of Education. Eppo Bruins discarded the starter’s and incentive grants. After the Senate agreed with the Cabinet’s budget cuts in early April, the universities of Tilburg and Nijmegen decided to take legal action. After all, how is it possible that such an agreement can suddenly be completely disregarded? ‘Different people in charge, different priorities, different investments’. Is that allowed?
prof. Raymond Schlössels, photo archive RS
Respected
That’s not how it works, explained Raymond Schlössels, Professor of Administrative Law at Maastricht University. “The rule is that an administrative agreement, a deal, should still be respected by a new government. Otherwise you damage legal certainty. It is all about the principle of trust, a principle of good governance.”
Is it political arrogance, to think that they could unilaterally cancel the deal? Shouldn’t the minister know better? “He is certainly aware of the risk, it’s political disinclination, this cabinet simply has other priorities.”
Initially, Bruins wanted cuts to the sector plans. That would have resulted in a loss of research money, despite considerable investments. But Bruins was warned, by UNL, the umbrella organisation of universities, among others: scrapping the sector plans could lead to legal issues.
Schlössels: “That was a very bad move, particularly because of all those forward-looking investments. The starter’s and incentive grants, which he is now using as ‘spare change’, are a safer bet, in that sense. Not all of that money has been released yet.” At the same time, Schlössels emphasised, former Minister Dijkgraaf’s goal had always been to provide clarity to the universities, including for the starter’s and incentive grants, to offer them a multi-year perspective and reduce the workload. If pledged investments turn out to be empty promises, then trust in the government will be seriously damaged, he said.
Collectively
Now, Tilburg University and Radboud University Nijmegen are taking legal action. The former told Trouw that it wanted to sue for damages incurred. “We were coming on in leaps and bounds thanks to those starter’s and incentive grants,” a spokesperson for Tilburg University told the newspaper. “We held the legitimate belief that we would be receiving those grants for the next few years.” Maastricht is not (yet) joining them. “If you want compensation for damages, you have to prove they exist. That is a complex and time-consuming exercise,” a spokesperson for UM recently told Observant. But they will be following the Nijmegen and Tilburg case “with great interest”.
Schlössels wondered aloud whether it wouldn’t have been of added value if all the institutes acted together, “a collective case for compliance. It doesn’t make your case stronger if you take legal action individually. UM says it’s time-consuming, and that’s true, but this has been an issue for a while. Shouldn’t that file have been ready already? I’m not ruling out other considerations.” Some universities might not have the appetite for a fight, because it’s ‘not handy’, because they don’t want to get on the minister’s bad side. Consider the incoming Internationalisation in Balance Bill, the language assessments for foreign-language education, the ‘exemption’ for universities in border regions and contracting regions.
What does Schlössels expect from the lawsuit? Can the state say: ‘Dear judge, we have no other options, there are bigger problems surrounding defence and asylum, so we have to take money away from higher education and science?’ “A judge will examine whether the government ‘came to a reasonable decision’.” In other words, is it reasonable to take something away from one sector and then give it to another. “If there are persuasive arguments, that may just be the case. But are there any? I wonder. In the end, it’s really about reliability, of financial policy, of the government.”