The Netherlands Wants 25,000 Fewer Government Jobs, and AI Will Not Do It Alone

The Netherlands has put a number on the AI efficiency era, and the number is 25,000 jobs. On Monday the cabinet told parliament that central government should employ about 25,000 fewer full time equivalent staff by 2035, as annual savings rise to 3.5 billion euros. Read the letter behind the announcement, though, and a more honest story appears. The 25,000 figure is a rough estimate converted from a budget target, and the government itself warns readers not to expect AI to deliver it.

The Announcement

State Secretary Eric van der Burg set out the plan in a progress letter to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, on October 26. The cabinet wants a government that is, in his words, simpler, smarter and smaller. Savings start at 900 million euros in 2027 and climb to 3.5 billion euros a year from 2035, according to the letter and a government statement reported by Reuters.

The starting point explains the urgency the cabinet feels. Central government employed a record 160,000 full time equivalent staff at the end of 2025, up 41 percent on 2018, despite promises by earlier cabinets to shrink it. Van der Burg argues that rules, exceptions and procedures have piled up until the state makes its own work harder than it needs to be.

Important Details

The cuts will not land evenly. Police and defence sit outside the plan, so the weight falls on ministries, inspectorates and the agencies that deliver public services. Bloomberg reports that some organisations face reductions of around 20 percent, others near 45 percent, and one exceptional case could reach 60 percent, in part because temporary funding expires. Most civil servants work in delivery, so delivery agencies carry much of the target.

Alongside the staffing target sit the tools meant to make a smaller state workable. The cabinet wants at least 500 rules scrapped or simplified every year, split between citizens and entrepreneurs. It will review the Wet open overheid, the Dutch freedom of information law, so that the law needs fewer staff to run, and it aims over time at one workplace for every two civil servants. It also says it will favour Dutch and European suppliers for new technology, rather than deepen dependence on suppliers from outside Europe.

The Catch

Here is where the announcement parts company with the coverage it generated. The letter contains no figure for how many jobs AI is supposed to absorb. The cabinet will present its goals and savings plans for AI use only in the first quarter of 2027. Until then, AI in this plan is an intention, not a calculation.

The letter is blunter still about the record of past rounds. Its lessons section, summarised by Computable and Dutch IT Channel, warns that promises of lower costs and smaller staff rolls from digitalisation were not delivered in the past. Earlier automation brought new tasks, added complexity and a rise in outside hiring instead. The CPB, the Dutch bureau for economic policy analysis, puts the saving available from pure efficiency at a maximum of 0.5 percent a year. That covers about a third of the total target. The other two thirds must come from choices: stop tasks that are no longer needed, simplify what has grown too complex, and thin out the layers of the apparatus itself.

Blom noted that earlier cuts to Dutch civil service numbers were followed by renewed hiring. An OECD report from September 2025, cited by Bloomberg, adds wider context: government use of AI trails the private sector, and public sector AI projects often remain stuck in pilot phases. France offers a useful contrast. Its government is rolling out an AI assistant to public workers after a trial that cut time spent on writing tasks by about 12 percent, and Paris has said it will not accept an AI that replaces civil servants.

What Is Next

Two dates now matter. In the first quarter of 2027 the cabinet presents its AI goals and savings plans, which is when the AI share of this story becomes measurable for the first time. In about six months the spring fiscal update will set out how many jobs go at each ministry, which turns a national estimate into named institutions and real teams.

Also due in 2027 are details of the freedom of information law review. Within two years the cabinet wants a legal route for sharing data between government organisations, so services can reach citizens without each agency building its own copy of the same file. None of that is settled yet, and the split between natural departures, tighter hiring and outright job losses remains an open question. Van der Burg has ruled out a blanket hiring freeze, calling it too rigid a tool.

The honest summary is this. The Netherlands is not firing 25,000 people and handing their desks to software. It is setting a savings target, converting that target into a rough staffing estimate, and admitting in its own letter that technology will supply only a slice of the answer. The rest is the oldest problem in government: deciding what the state should stop doing. Every capital watching this experiment should read the letter, not just the headline.

Sources

• Reuters, via Euronext: Netherlands aims to cut around 20 percent of government jobs over the next decade
• Bloomberg, via Insurance Journal: Can AI Replace Government Jobs? The World Is Watching the Dutch
• NLnow: Cabinet plans to cut 25,000 civil service jobs and use more AI
• Computable: Kabinet rekent op ai voor forse bezuiniging op personeel
• Dutch IT Channel: Kabinet hervormt digitale dienstverlening