The Netherlands will cut 25,000 civil service jobs. The AI plan comes later

The Dutch government wants to lose 25,000 jobs. Technically they are full-time posts, so the number of actual people will differ. The arithmetic lands on desks either way.

On 26 October, State Secretary Eric van der Burg sent parliament a progress letter on what the cabinet calls a decisive government. The press release headline promised a state that is "eenvoudiger, slimmer en kleiner": simpler, smarter, smaller. Central government spending is to fall by €900 million a year from 2027, rising to €3.5 billion a year from 2035. The cabinet estimates that means about 25,000 fewer full-time posts, spread over several years, Bloomberg reports.

The central government workforce stood at a record 160,000 at the end of 2025, up 41% since 2018. So this is a cut of roughly one in six. Semafor put it at more than 15% of the civil service. Police and defence are exempt. Some departments face cuts of 45%, and one around 60%, according to coverage of the letter.

"We cannot keep doing what we have been doing," Van der Burg said.

Where the AI comes in

Headlines around the world called this an AI-led overhaul. Read the government's own release and AI gets one sentence: the cabinet will present goals and savings plans for using AI to work more productively in the first quarter of 2027.

In other words, the job number exists now and the AI plan that is supposed to justify part of it does not. The cabinet has committed to the cuts before it has said what the machines will actually do.

Computable, the Dutch IT trade outlet, read the full letter and found more detail. Chatbots and AI are supposed to take over administrative work and contact with citizens, including round-the-clock service. Procurement teams will look systematically for places to apply AI. Van der Burg's line, as Computable quotes it: with these changes "kunnen we werken met minder mensen" (we can work with fewer people).

The same letter carries a warning, and it is the most honest thing in it. According to Computable, it notes that earlier digitalisation projects in government often ended up needing more staff, not fewer. An English-language analysis of the letter's appendix quotes a lesson that reads, in translation, "Do not overestimate the staffing effects of digitalisation and AI." The appendix also calls the 25,000 figure a rough estimate, because the real number depends on which pay grades get cut.

So the government's plan contains its own counterargument. The cut is firm. The productivity that is meant to absorb it is a hope with a deadline.

The Netherlands has been here before

Dutch citizens have particular reasons to be wary of a state that leans on automated systems to save money. In the childcare benefits scandal, the tax authority wrongly accused thousands of families of fraud and demanded crippling repayments. A self-learning risk model that used nationality as a factor helped pick out who got investigated. Mark Rutte's third cabinet resigned over it in January 2021. The country is still paying compensation.

No chatbot caused that affair. It still showed what happens when a government treats efficiency as the goal and the citizen as the input. A risk score flagged people. Too few humans were left with the time or the authority to say the score was wrong.

Now the plan is fewer humans, more automation, and easier data sharing between bodies such as the Tax Administration, municipalities and the Chamber of Commerce. The release frames that as proactive service: the government should not ask you for data it already has. That is genuinely useful. It is also exactly the kind of joined-up data the benefits scandal ran on.

The cabinet also says it will cut at least 500 rules a year and shrink its 28 permanent advisory councils and roughly 150 advisory committees. Fewer rules, fewer advisers, fewer staff, more software. Each of those can be defended separately. Together they describe a state with less friction in it, and friction is sometimes the thing that stops a bad decision.

The Netherlands is not alone. Semafor notes that New Zealand is considering similar proportional cuts and the UAE wants to become an "AI-native" government. The Dutch plan is just the most specific so far: a number of posts, a number of euros, a year.

What it does not have yet is the part where the AI works. That arrives in spring 2027, with details of how the cuts will fall due in the spring budget memorandum. Until then, 25,000 is a target written in ink and the technology meant to deliver it is written in pencil.

Sources: Rijksoverheid (Dutch government), Bloomberg, Computable, Semafor.