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SRH Haarlem University of Applied Sciences is launching a new Academy for professionals, leaders and organisations. With an offering of executive education, short programmes, tailor-made corporate programmes and personal development tracks, SRH aims to respond to the growing need for lifelong learning. To lead the Academy’s further development, SRH Haarlem has appointed Arno Peperkoorn as Head of Academy.

The labour market is changing faster than ever. New technologies, digitalisation, sustainability and evolving organisational structures continually demand new knowledge and skills. At the same time, the need for education that is flexible and immediately applicable in practice is growing.

Through the Academy, SRH Haarlem aims to support professionals who wish to continue developing alongside their work, and to help organisations strengthen knowledge, leadership and innovation within their teams.

“The days when learning stopped after graduation are behind us. Organisations and professionals must continue developing continuously to remain relevant. With the SRH Haarlem Academy, we want to create an environment where knowledge, personal development, leadership and entrepreneurship come together,” says Arno Peperkoorn, Head of Academy at SRH Haarlem Academy.

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Four ways to learn with us

The Academy is built around four distinct ways of learning, each designed to deliver knowledge that is immediately useful. Go deep, fast. Masterclasses and bootcamps let professionals explore pressing topics (digitalisation, innovation, sustainability) intensively and without disrupting their work schedules. Short by design, high-impact by intent.

Lead what’s next.

Executive education programmes are built for managers, entrepreneurs and leaders who need to think ahead. The focus is on preparing organisations for what’s coming.

Built for your organisation.

Tailor-made corporate programmes draw on SRH’s internationally applied CORE principle: competency development, practice-oriented learning and direct applicability. Every programme is shaped around the specific challenges and goals of the organisation it serves.

Grow as a person.

Leadership, emotional intelligence, intercultural communication, personal effectiveness. These are the skills that increasingly define professional success in complex, international environments, and they sit at the heart of the Academy’s personal development track.

A bridge between education and business

Beyond knowledge transfer, the SRH Haarlem Academy is committed to actively fostering collaboration with the business community. By involving organisations in the development of programmes and courses, the Academy aims to address current challenges in the areas of leadership, innovation, entrepreneurship, digitalisation and sustainable growth.

“Many organisations are not looking for lengthy programmes, but for concrete knowledge and skills that can be applied immediately. At the same time, we see that topics such as leadership, innovation and personal development are becoming ever more important. The Academy should become a place where professionals and organisations learn, grow and innovate together,” says Peperkoorn.

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The culmination of an educational vision

With the Academy, SRH Haarlem takes a further step in its educational vision, one that deliberately prioritises action-oriented learning, practical assignments and solving real-world business challenges.

The Academy builds on the knowledge, experience and international network of the SRH Higher Education Group, one of the largest private education organisations in Germany. By combining international expertise with practical business experience, SRH Haarlem aims to develop courses and programmes that address the challenges of today and tomorrow.

About SRH Haarlem University of Applied Sciences

SRH Haarlem University of Applied Sciences is a private, internationally oriented institution located at the historical building De Koepel, in the heart of Haarlem, the Netherlands. Founded in 2021 by SRH Higher Education (Germany), the university offers NVAO-accredited Bachelor and Master programmes in Business Psychology, Digital Transformation Management, Creative Media. With students from 80 nationalities and enrolment growth of over 50% in the 2025/2026 academic year, SRH Haarlem is one of the Netherlands’ fastest-growing international universities of applied sciences.

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The Dutch government expects to reach its long-standing target of 100,000 new homes a year in 2027, which would be the first time the country has managed it since 1990. The expectation is based on a new forecast by research bureau ABF Research, commissioned by the government, though the report comes with clear warnings about whether the pace can be kept up.

A milestone within reach

The target of building 100,000 homes a year was set by an earlier government and has become a central goal of housing policy. For years it has remained out of reach, but the latest figures suggest that could change. ABF points to a sharp rise in the number of building permits (bouwvergunningen) issued since October 2023. Because it takes, on average, just over two years from a permit being granted to a home being finished, the bureau expects around 91,000 homes to be completed this year and roughly 100,000 in 2027.

Housing Minister Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan welcomed the forecast. “That would be the first time since 1990. An important milestone and good news for all house-seekers,” she said. In comments to the newspaper De Telegraaf, she spoke of relatively high certainty about the outlook, adding that it now comes down to persevering.

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Why the numbers are rising

Part of the improvement is down to the wider economy. Interest rates and building costs, which had risen steeply and caused a building dip in 2024 and 2025, have stopped climbing, making projects easier to finance. The forecast was also revised upwards compared with a year ago, largely because a planned freeze on social housing rents was scrapped. That freeze would have left housing associations (in Dutch, corporaties), which help fund many large building projects, with much less money to invest.

The way the homes are counted also matters. ABF includes not only newly built houses but also homes created by splitting existing properties and converting buildings such as empty offices into flats. That is why its figures are higher than those of the national statistics office CBS, which counts newbuild more narrowly.

The warnings behind the forecast

The report is not straightforwardly good news. ABF expects the building pace to fall back again after 2027, to around 90,000 homes a year later in the decade. The AD newspaper framed this as a renewed decline driven by interest rates and uncertainty.

ABF is also candid about the limits of its own forecast. It assumes that problems such as the overloaded electricity grid, nitrogen rules, restrictions around goat farms and pesticide-spraying zones will hold back construction only to a limited extent. “This assumption may be too optimistic,” the researchers wrote. A large share of the building plans needed for the coming years has also yet to receive a permit, which adds further uncertainty.

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The shortage is still growing

Even if the target is met, the housing shortage will remain large for years. Around 400,000 homes are currently missing, and the shortfall has continued to grow, driven by migration and by more people living alone, which increases the number of households. Government projections suggest that building 100,000 homes a year would only bring the shortage down to a balanced level in the mid-2030s.

What it means for house-seekers

For people trying to find a home in the Netherlands, the message is mixed. The pipeline of permits suggests more homes are genuinely on the way, and a record year may be close. At the same time, the forecasters themselves caution that the improvement could prove short-lived, and that the shortage, which weighs heavily on renters and first-time buyers in particular, is not going to ease quickly.

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The number of highly skilled workers moving to the Netherlands from outside the European Union has nearly halved in three years, according to new figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the national statistics office. It is the clearest sign of a wider slowdown: overall immigration fell in 2025 for the third year in a row.

Skilled workers leading the decline

In 2025, 14,000 relatively well-paid, specialised workers came to the Netherlands from non-EU countries, down from 26,000 in 2022. These are so-called knowledge migrants (in Dutch, kennismigranten), people from outside the EU who take jobs in sectors with staff shortages and earn above a set salary threshold.

The steepest fall was among workers from India, the largest single group, with smaller declines among people from Turkey, Russia, China and South Africa. At the same time, the number of other, lower-paid labour migrants from outside the EU rose slightly. Taken together, labour has been a major reason for migration for years: over the past 26 years, nearly one in five migrants came to work, and in 2024 there were more than 61,000 labour migrants, two-thirds of them from within the EU.

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A third year of falling immigration

In total, 309,000 people moved to the Netherlands in 2025, 8,000 fewer than in 2024. Immigration rose almost continuously between 2006 and 2022, peaking in 2022 largely because of the war in Ukraine, but it has declined each year since.

Of those who arrived in 2025, almost half came from countries outside the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), around 37 percent from within the EU or EFTA, and about 14 percent were Dutch nationals, often people returning after living abroad.

Fewer asylum seekers, but reception still full

The number of asylum migrants also fell, to about 35,000 in 2025, around 4,000 fewer than the year before. They made up roughly 11 percent of all arrivals, slightly above the 9 percent average of the past 27 years. CBS counts asylum migrants as people who have entered the country legally and been registered as residents.

Within that group, the figures shifted. The number of people granted asylum in their own right dropped sharply, from 27,000 to 18,000, while the number of family members joining them rose, from about 12,000 to 16,500. The overall fall has not eased the strain on the asylum system: reception centres remain full, but the pressure now comes less from new arrivals than from people who have been granted a permit yet have not been able to find housing.

Separately, more than 28,000 refugees from Ukraine arrived in 2025 under the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive, the scheme that gives them the right to live and work in the bloc, around 2,000 fewer than in 2024.

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Family and study

Family was the single most common reason for moving to the Netherlands in 2024, the most recent year with a full breakdown, accounting for 68,000 arrivals, just over a fifth of the total. One in three family migrants came to join someone who had moved for work, which means that as fewer skilled workers arrive, fewer of their relatives follow. A further 38,000 people came to study, about 12 percent of all arrivals that year.

The policy backdrop

The decline comes after years in which successive governments promised to bring immigration down. One of the measures has been the gradual scaling back of the 30 percent ruling, a tax break that allows part of some internationals’ salaries to be paid free of income tax. The highly skilled worker route itself remains open to people from outside the EU who take qualifying jobs above a salary threshold. Returning Dutch nationals who have lived abroad for more than 25 years can also claim the same tax break, provided they take a qualifying job and meet the conditions.

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A new batch of laws, benefit changes and price rises takes effect in the Netherlands on 1 July, as it does every half-year. Some bring more money into people’s pockets; others will cost them. Here is a round-up of the main changes.

Minimum wage and benefits

The legal minimum wage rises from €14.71 to €14.99 gross an hour for everyone aged 21 and over, an increase of 1.9 percent. Because Dutch benefits are tied to the minimum wage, they climb alongside it. The state pension (AOW) for people living alone rises from €1,558.15 to €1,581.55 net a month, and other benefits, including social assistance (bijstand), disability insurance (WIA) and youth disability support (Wajong), also go up. Child benefit increases in line with consumer prices.

Rents

Social housing rents can rise by up to 4.1 percent this year, down from last year’s 5 percent ceiling. Rooms in shared housing face the same limit. On average, housing associations expect their rents to go up by 3.6 percent, bringing the typical social rent to around €666 a month. The maximum rent for a social home is now €932.93.

People on higher incomes living in social housing can be charged more. Landlords may add €50 a month for a higher middle income and €100 for a higher income.

For mid-market and private rentals, the rent increases for 2026 already took effect in January. The maximum increase for mid-market homes was 6.1 percent; for private-sector homes it was 4.4 percent.

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Non-EU parcels

Ordering from webshops outside the EU, such as the Chinese platforms Temu and Shein, is about to become more expensive. From 1 July, a €3 import charge applies per type of product. The previous exemption for low-value parcels worth under €150 disappears.

The fee is charged per distinct product type, not per parcel. Order two identical T-shirts and you pay €3 once; order a T-shirt and a USB cable and you pay €6. A parcel containing ten different items could carry €30 in fees.

The EU agreed to the measure last year as a way to curb the flood of cheap parcels entering the bloc and to level the playing field for European retailers. In 2025, imports of small parcels into the EU surpassed 5.88 billion items. Additional processing fees are expected from November 2026 to help fund enhanced customs controls, and a more permanent framework is due to replace the €3 charge by 2028.

Cold calling

From 1 July, companies can no longer phone you to sell something unless you have given explicit permission, even if you are or were a customer. The so-called “soft opt-in,” which allowed businesses to call existing customers, is scrapped for telemarketing calls.

Calls from a withheld number are also no longer allowed. The change is part of an amendment to the Telecommunications Act, which was prompted by thousands of complaints about pressure selling and unwanted calls.

Charities, lotteries that give to good causes, and newspaper and magazine publishers are exempt. The rules do not prevent upselling during an inbound service call that the customer initiates.

Power grid waiting lists

Households applying for a new or heavier electricity connection, for example to fit a heat pump or car charger, can now be placed on a waiting list if the local grid is full. Until now, only businesses faced such queues.

In Noord-Brabant and much of Utrecht, new connections and upgrades are already on hold. Grid operator Liander has placed roughly 7,300 households on a waiting list, with some facing waits of up to three years. A new priority framework from regulator ACM puts facilities such as healthcare and drinking water first, followed by housing, with businesses last.

The root of the problem is netcongestie, or grid congestion, where demand from electric cars, heat pumps and solar panels has outpaced the capacity of the network. Around 14,000 businesses are already waiting for a grid connection or upgrade.

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Tobacco sellers

Shops selling cigarettes, vapes and other tobacco products must register with the food and product safety authority NVWA. The government wants to reduce the number of tobacco sales points and improve oversight of where products are sold. Supermarkets are already banned from selling tobacco.

Cameras in new cars

From 7 July, every new car sold in the EU must have a driver monitoring system. The technology, called Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW), uses a camera to detect whether the driver is paying attention to the road. If the driver’s gaze drifts away for too long, the system triggers a warning, which may be a sound, a visual alert on the dashboard, or both.

The measure is part of the EU’s General Safety Regulation, which aims to cut road deaths by half by 2030. Estimates suggest driver distraction accounts for 10 to 30 percent of all road accidents.

Bank transfers

Banks can now be ordered to hold a payment for up to five days if the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit suspects it is linked to money laundering or terrorist financing. The delay gives investigators time to act.

Lorry charge

Lorry owners start paying a per-kilometre toll on almost all motorways and some provincial roads. The amount depends on the weight and emissions of the vehicle; cleaner, lighter trucks pay less. A 40-tonne Euro VI truck will pay around €0.16 per kilometre, or roughly €8,000 a year for a truck driving 50,000 kilometres in the Netherlands.

The new charge replaces the Eurovignette, which ends on 1 July. Road tax for lorries is scrapped until the end of 2026 because of high fuel prices, and the tax on vans is halved for the same period. Every truck must have a working on-board unit (OBU) to pay the toll; vehicles without one may be fined.

Other changes

• Tachographs become compulsory for vans of 2,500 to 3,500 kilograms used for international transport. These devices record driving time, rest periods, speed and distance.

• New childminders must complete a teaching module before starting.

• Employment agencies must be told when a temporary worker has a workplace accident and report it to the labour inspectorate.

• Environmental rules on building materials are tightened for offices and introduced for the first time for schools, shops and factories.

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The Dutch cabinet wants to make coercive control and psychological abuse criminal offences, writing them explicitly into the law for the first time. The aim, according to the government, is to allow perpetrators to be prosecuted sooner, so that domestic violence can be stopped before it escalates. The measures are part of a wider proposal presented by Justice and Security Minister David van Weel, intended in part to help prevent femicide, the killing of women, which is often committed by a partner.

New offences: coercive control and psychological abuse

At present, these forms of abuse are not always punishable under Dutch law. Psychological abuse (in Dutch, psychische mishandeling) refers to a pattern of behaviour such as belittling, intimidating and bullying someone. Coercive control (dwingende controle) describes a situation in which one person seeks power over another, for example by systematically humiliating them, frightening them, restricting their freedom or keeping them under constant watch.

“It has major consequences for victims, but at the moment it is not always punishable,” Van Weel said of the current situation. “As a result, the police and the justice system can do too little, including in situations that are serious or escalating.”

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Acting before violence escalates

Experts regard psychological violence as a step that can precede physical violence and femicide. Victims, however, often find the threshold to report it too high, which in turn limits what the law can do. Under the new proposal, the Public Prosecution Service (the Openbaar Ministerie) would be able to act on its own initiative to arrest people for coercive control, psychological abuse and stalking.

The scale of the problem is significant. In a 2024 study, around 200,000 people said they had been victims of psychological violence, about 130,000 women and 70,000 men.

Tougher sentences for killing a partner

The proposal also responds to a difficulty that arises in court. In femicide cases, it is often impossible to prove premeditation, so the perpetrator is convicted of manslaughter (doodslag) rather than murder (moord), which carries a lower sentence. Van Weel wants judges to be able to punish more severely when a fatal crime was preceded by coercive control or psychological abuse.

In those specific cases, the maximum sentence for manslaughter would rise from 25 years to 30 years, or even life imprisonment, meaning a perpetrator could face the same penalty as for murder. The minister argued that this is justifiable because, as he put it, the perpetrator has slowly worked towards that moment over a long period.

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Sextortion also covered

The same bill addresses sextortion, the blackmailing of someone with sexual photos or videos. At present this is only punishable if the victim is actually forced into doing something; under the proposal, the threat alone would be enough to bring a prosecution.

A draft, not yet law

The plan is a first draft, which Van Weel published on Monday so that experts and members of the public can give feedback through a public consultation. Because these behaviours involve patterns rather than single incidents, they can be harder to define and prove than physical violence, which is one reason the draft is being opened up for scrutiny. After the consultation, the cabinet will review it again before sending a final version to the two houses of parliament, the Tweede Kamer and the Eerste Kamer, which will debate it and decide whether to approve it.

If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or abuse, in the Netherlands you can contact Veilig Thuis, the advice and reporting point for domestic abuse, on 0800 2000. The line is free and available around the clock.

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Travellers in the Netherlands should expect fewer trains on Monday and Tuesday, as the rail network recovers from the recent extreme heat and a stormy weekend. The national rail operator NS said it is reducing intercity services on several routes, mostly in the Randstad, the densely populated region that includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.

What caused the disruption

The problems come from two separate causes. During the heatwave of the past week, the high temperatures caused trains to break down and led to technical failures at switches (the moving sections of track that guide trains from one line to another). Then, during the severe storms overnight from Saturday to Sunday, trees and branches fell onto the tracks in several places, and a lightning strike near Gouda brought train traffic there to a standstill.

The combination made repairs harder. NS said the storm damage made it difficult to move broken-down trains to maintenance depots, and that staff from across the country were working extra to get those trains repaired and back into service. The rail infrastructure manager ProRail said the problems caused by the lightning strike near Gouda have since been resolved.

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Which routes are affected

NS said the impact is limited and concentrated in the Randstad, where many trains already run. On Monday and Tuesday, fewer intercity trains are running on five routes: The Hague Centraal to Utrecht Centraal; The Hague Centraal to Amsterdam Centraal; Utrecht Centraal to Rotterdam Centraal; Rotterdam Centraal to Schiphol and Arnhem Centraal; and Alkmaar to Haarlem, the last of these during rush hour only. There are also fewer sprinter trains, the local services that stop at every station, between Gouda Goverwelle and The Hague Centraal during rush hour. NS did not say whether the reduced service would continue after Tuesday, but said it would post any further impact on its website and in the NS app.

The heat itself has eased

The disruption is the aftermath of the heat rather than the heat itself, which has now broken. After Friday’s record-breaking temperatures and a round of heavy thunderstorms, the weather has turned cooler, with daytime temperatures expected to stay around 25°C for much of this week. The trains, switches and tracks, however, still need time to recover.

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What travellers should do

NS advised passengers to set off well prepared. The simplest step is to check the NS Reisplanner, the journey planner on the NS website and app, just before leaving, or to turn on notifications in the app, so any changes to a specific journey show up in good time. Because the affected routes are busy commuter lines, the trains that are still running may be fuller than usual, so allowing extra time is sensible.

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After a stretch of extreme heat, relief is finally in sight for the Netherlands, though it is likely to arrive with a bang. Severe thunderstorms are expected to sweep the country on Saturday evening, breaking the heatwave and ushering in much cooler weather.

A record-breaking few days

The heat reached its peak on Friday, which was the warmest 26 June ever measured in the Netherlands. The highest temperature, 39.4°C, was recorded in Ell, in Limburg, while it reached 36.6°C at the De Bilt weather station, the warmest June day recorded there, and 38.2°C in Eindhoven, also a local record. It was the first time the KNMI had issued code rood, its heaviest warning, because of heat.

The national record of 40.7°C, set in Gilze-Rijen in July 2019, was not broken. Across the border, however, Germany set a new national record of 41.3°C at the Saarbrücken-Burbach station, just above its previous high. The nights offered little respite either, with temperatures in many places staying above 20°C, what meteorologists call a tropical night.

Saturday remains very warm, with highs of 33 to 38°C, and code red for heat still in force in the southeast until the evening, before the change arrives.

All the ingredients for severe storms

According to a meteorologist quoted by AD, all the ingredients are in place for heavy thunderstorms late on Saturday evening. The KNMI has issued code geel (a yellow warning) for the whole country for the evening, when severe storms could bring hailstones of 2 to 5 centimetres, wind gusts of 75 to 100 km/h and a lot of rain in a short time, enough to cause local damage and disruption.

Forecasters say the storms could be intense. The KNMI warns of a real chance of an organised line of storms with an embedded supercell, the most powerful type of thunderstorm, in which the rising air rotates. Its spokesperson Jan Rozema said the likelihood across the whole country was considerable, and that the storms could be worse than those of the previous week, which had caused damage and, in one case, a death.

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Cooler weather on the way

The storms come with a cold front that gradually cools the country. Temperatures will start to drop on Sunday, when there is still a chance of thunderstorms, mainly in the southeast, and the change becomes clearer from Monday, when it turns much less warm. The KNMI expects more changeable weather to follow, with a mix of sun, cloud and the occasional shower, and temperatures closer to normal for the time of year.

A heatwave shaped by climate change

Scientists have linked the extreme heat to a changing climate. According to an analysis by the international World Weather Attribution network, with input from the KNMI, a June heatwave on this scale across Europe would have been almost impossible without climate change. KNMI climate scientist Sjoukje Philip said the contrast with the major heatwave of 2003 was striking, and that warm nights now occur around a hundred times more often than they did then.

That matters for health, she noted, because the body needs to cool down after a hot day, and several tropical nights in a row make that difficult, especially for older and unwell people. The public health institute RIVM kept its National Heat Plan in force through the weekend and also warned of smog, with poor air quality possible in parts of the centre and northwest, advising sensitive people to stay indoors and limit exertion in the late afternoon.

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Staying safe in the storms

With heavy storms forecast, the advice is to take simple precautions: secure loose items in gardens and on balconies, avoid sheltering under trees, and take account of possible disruption to traffic and outdoor plans. After a tiring week of heat, the cooler days ahead will be welcome for many.

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Tens of thousands of households in the Netherlands are being asked to help relieve the overloaded electricity grid, in a scheme that pays them to let some of their appliances be controlled remotely. Regional grid operators (netbeheerders) Liander, Enexis and Stedin have teamed up with energy suppliers including Eneco, Essent, Vattenfall, Frank Energie and Zonneplan to scale up the approach.

In return for a payment, participating households allow their home batteries, charge points for electric cars and hybrid heat pumps to be steered remotely by their energy supplier. At busy moments the devices use less power, and where possible home batteries feed electricity back to the grid when there is a shortage. Participation is voluntary.

How it would work

For most of the day, the grid has no problems. It becomes very busy only between 4 and 9 pm, especially in winter, when large numbers of people heat their homes, charge their cars and cook with electricity at the same time. In some places, the network can no longer handle that simultaneous peak.

The idea is to flatten that peak. During those hours, participating homes would avoid charging the car or switching on many appliances at once, while around midday, when there is often plenty of solar power, would be a good time to charge the car, run the washing machine and dishwasher, and warm the house with the heat pump. The suppliers say households should not have to do anything themselves and should not lose comfort: the home stays at a pleasant temperature, the car is charged by the next morning, and charging around dinnertime is still possible if needed.

This has been done on a small scale before. A year ago, about 35,000 households in 21 areas could take part, and the companies say those trials showed people are willing to shift their use as long as it is simple and pays. Now they want 50,000 to 70,000 households in Gelderland and Utrecht, and parts of Flevoland and Noord-Brabant, to join, with the aim of reaching around 60,000 participants before winter. From 1 July, any energy supplier that meets the conditions can take part. The eventual goal is to free up 255 megawatt of flexible capacity, comparable to the electricity use of the city of Haarlem, and the companies believe that, in time, hundreds of thousands of households could help.

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Why the grid is under strain

The Netherlands is dealing with what is known as netcongestie, or grid congestion, where the network cannot keep up with demand. The pressure has grown as more people switch to electric cars, heat pumps and other electric appliances. The problem is now serious enough that, in parts of Utrecht and Noord-Brabant, no new connections can be added while the grid is overloaded; in Utrecht, households wanting a new or heavier connection can be placed on a waiting list from 1 July.

What is in it for households

About one million households in the Netherlands already have a dynamic energy contract, where the price changes every hour depending on supply and demand. With plenty of sun and wind, power is cheap; when those fall away and gas plants have to work harder, it becomes expensive. Because of those price swings, many of these households already shift their use and help ease congestion.

The new scheme aims to bring in people on fixed and variable contracts too. They would sign up to an arrangement under which, in principle, they do not charge their car in the late afternoon and early evening, or in which their home battery charges during a surplus and feeds power back during a shortage. Even the heat pump can be turned up or down by the supplier. What this earns depends on circumstances, but large suppliers such as Essent and Vattenfall expect it could be worth several hundred euros a year, with the exact payment differing per supplier.

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Smart use is not enough on its own

The grid operators are clear that this scheme is not a substitute for building more network. “The energy transition requires not only expansion of the grid, but also smarter use of it,” said Maarten Otto, chair of the umbrella body Netbeheer Nederland, who called the situation urgent. Whatever the project achieves, the operators say, heavy investment in expanding the grid must continue, and the procedures for strengthening it need to be faster. The government is working on an emergency law to speed up the construction of cables, pylons and transformer stations.

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For the first time ever, the Dutch weather service KNMI has issued code rood (code red) because of heat. The warning applies to most of the country for Friday 26 June, when temperatures are expected to reach up to 40°C in places. Combined with high humidity, the KNMI says this will create an unpleasant, oppressive heat across almost the whole country.

Only the northern provinces of Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe, along with Zeeland, are under the lower code oranje, with the Wadden Islands under code geel.

What code red means

Code red is the heaviest of the KNMI’s weather warnings. In meteorological terms it is no different from code orange; the difference is in the expected impact. The decision is taken by a body called the weerimpactteam (weather impact team), in which the KNMI sits alongside organisations such as the police and fire brigade, the National Crisis Centre, the Dutch traffic control centre, the rail manager ProRail and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. They move to code red when dangerous weather could disrupt society, weighing the risk of injury, damage and serious disruption.

“It will be a hard day, which many people will also feel physically,” said KNMI director Maarten van Aalst, who noted that more people die when it is this hot. “So we have to take the heaviest measure to warn everyone.”

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The advice

The KNMI warns that, in these conditions, everyone is at risk of dehydration, overheating and even a life-threatening heatstroke, partly because the body cannot cool down enough, including at night. The institute revised its guidance during the day: rather than telling everyone to stay indoors, which can sometimes be dangerously hot, it now advises staying out of the sun as much as possible and watching for signs of dehydration and overheating.

The wider advice is familiar from earlier in the week: drink enough water even without feeling thirsty, avoid heavy physical activity between noon and 6 pm, use sunscreen, keep your home cool by closing curtains and windows during the day and airing it in the early morning, and never leave children or pets in a parked car. People are also urged to check on those around them who may be vulnerable to the heat.

Separately, the road authority Rijkswaterstaat advised people to go out on the roads only if necessary. Anyone who does travel is advised to take water and sun protection, such as an umbrella or parasol, as the heat can damage road surfaces and cause delays.

A country partly at a standstill

The code red has consequences across daily life. Many schools, and some universities including the University of Amsterdam, have closed their doors, with some arranging emergency childcare for pupils who have nowhere else to go. Court hearings in the code-red provinces have been cancelled, with urgent cases continuing where possible, and the driving test organisation CBR is not holding exams in those provinces. Public transport keeps running, though passengers are warned of possible disruptions, and the railway company NS is running fewer trains on some routes as a precaution, because carriages can overheat.

Care for patients continues, with health organisations tightening their heat protocols and some starting their shifts earlier in the day. A string of events has been cancelled or scaled back, including the national Veterans’ Day parade, while the TT Assen motorcycling event is going ahead with adjustments, such as allowing visitors to bring their own water.

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A confirmed heatwave, and a warning about the climate

The heat also means a national heatwave is now official. To count as one, the De Bilt weather station, used for national records, must record at least five days in a row above 25°C, of which three are above 30°C, a threshold that has now been met. Friday is expected to be the hottest day of this period, with local peaks of around 40°C; the national record stands at 40.7°C, measured in Gilze-Rijen in 2019.

Scientists link the extreme weather to a changing climate. According to an analysis by the international World Weather Attribution network, with input from the KNMI, a June heatwave like this one would have been almost impossible without climate change, and such temperatures barely occurred 50 years ago. The public health institute RIVM has also warned of smog, with poor air quality possible along the North Sea coast and, on Saturday, ozone smog over parts of the centre and north; people sensitive to it are advised to stay inside and exert themselves less, especially in the late afternoon.

Heat can be dangerous, especially for older people, young children and those with health conditions. The advice is to keep an eye on vulnerable neighbours and relatives, and to seek medical help if someone shows signs of heatstroke.

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The Dutch government should take steps to discourage alcohol use among everyone in the Netherlands and make drinking less normal, the Gezondheidsraad (Health Council) has advised. The council, an independent body that advises the government on scientific health questions, says there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

“Alcohol use should become less normal in our society,” said Karien Stronks of the Gezondheidsraad. “There is no safe lower limit; every glass you drink is harmful. Not only to yourself, but also to others.”

‘No safe level’

The council says there is strong evidence that the risk of seven types of cancer rises with any amount of alcohol, and that the risk of organ damage also increases. Beyond illness, it points to alcohol’s role in road accidents and in incidents involving aggression and violence.

It also puts some numbers to this. According to Stronks, a quarter of road deaths, between 75 and 140 a year, are caused by alcohol, and around 65,000 people a year end up in emergency care in cases where alcohol plays a part.

Following the approach taken with smoking

The council frames the issue as a question of social norms, and draws a direct comparison with smoking, which has become far less accepted in recent decades. “Just as happened with smoking,” Stronks said, drinks at work could also be alcohol-free. “We now often associate alcohol with conviviality, but compare it with smoking, which is no longer the norm either.”

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What the council proposes

The Gezondheidsraad sets out three strategies that, according to the World Health Organization, are effective in reducing alcohol use: raising the price of alcoholic drinks, limiting their availability, and restricting their marketing and advertising.

In concrete terms, that could mean higher excise duties (the tax levied on alcohol), restricting sales to off-licences (in Dutch, the slijterij) rather than supermarkets, and requiring plain, unattractive packaging carrying health warnings. The council also recommends banning alcohol for road users altogether, meaning a limit of 0.0 percent, spreading the message that drinking is not normal, and helping people who want to cut down or stop.

Drinking is already declining

The advice comes at a time when fewer adults in the Netherlands are drinking. In 2014, 81 percent of adults said they drank at least occasionally; last year that had fallen to 76 percent, according to figures from the Trimbos Institute, which researches mental health and addiction. In 2025, 7 percent of adults described themselves as heavy drinkers, meaning at least four glasses for women or six for men, at least once a week.

The council also weighs the costs. Stronks put the damage from alcohol use at between 2 and 6 billion euros a year. A 2013 cost-benefit analysis by the public health institute RIVM calculated a net cost of 2.3 to 4.2 billion euros, taking into account both excise revenue and costs such as treating injuries and policing events. The RIVM is due to publish a new analysis this autumn.

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What happens next

The report is advice, not policy. It now goes to the government, which asked the council for this assessment and will decide whether, and how, to act on it. Decisions on taxes, sales rules and advertising would be for ministers and parliament to take, and measures of this kind can be politically sensitive, with proposals to raise alcohol taxes or tighten sales rules having met resistance before. The Netherlands already has an official guideline, in place since 2015, recommending that adults drink no alcohol, or at most one glass a day.

If you or someone you know wants to cut down or stop drinking, a general practitioner (huisarts) can help, and free, anonymous advice is available in the Netherlands.

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A coalition of around 60 Dutch organisations is calling on the government to make water-saving compulsory in new and renovated homes. The group warns of “drinking water congestion,” a situation in which the supply can no longer keep up with demand, and says voluntary measures are no longer enough.

The call was made through a manifest, presented as a petition to the Tweede Kamer (the Dutch House of Representatives) by the Bouwtafel Waterzuinige Wijken, which translates as the “water-efficient neighbourhoods working table.” Its members include municipalities, provinces, water boards (the regional authorities that manage water), and companies from the water and construction sectors. The report was carried by the news agency ANP.

A warning of ‘drinking water congestion’

The coalition draws a direct comparison with the electricity network, where a shortage of capacity, known as grid congestion, has held up new connections and building projects. It warns that drinking water could become the next bottleneck, leaving new homes unable to count on a water connection as a matter of course.

“Drinking water threatens to become the new grid congestion, while the solutions are already available, from water-saving sanitary fittings to the reuse of purified rain and waste water,” said Martijn Dadema, a GroenLinks provincial executive in Overijssel and chair of the working table. “What is needed now is a clear national course, so that water-efficient building becomes the norm rather than the exception.”

Dadema put it plainly. “We are very explicitly asking: no more voluntary measures, no more just ads telling people to take shorter showers, but also simply making it part of the law.”

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What the coalition is asking for

One concrete idea is to flush toilets in new buildings with rainwater or used shower water, known as grey water, instead of clean drinking water. More broadly, the manifest sets out a series of requests: to speed up the government’s existing national plan for saving drinking water, to draw up a single national guideline for water-efficient building that municipalities, housing corporations and developers can follow, and to write water-saving and safe water reuse into law. Throughout, the group stresses that any reuse must come with safeguards for public health.

Learning from Flanders

The coalition points across the border to Flanders, in Belgium, as an example of what clear rules can achieve. There, collecting and reusing rainwater in new buildings has been compulsory since 2004, with toilets and washing machines connected to the rainwater system. Partly as a result, average drinking water use in Flanders is around 84 litres per person per day, compared with about 119 litres in the Netherlands.

The group also points to Dutch projects that already work. In Venhuizen, reusing rainwater has cut drinking water use by between 48 and 92 percent, depending on the size of the storage tank, while grey-water systems in 15 homes in the Blitseard district of Leeuwarden save around 300,000 litres of drinking water a year.

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Testing before legislating

The organisations are not asking for rules to be imposed overnight. They want water-saving technologies to be tried out first in a limited number of example neighbourhoods, where solutions can be tested and monitored in practice, before being turned into national legislation. The coalition says independent bodies should assess whether the methods are safe before they are scaled up.

The bigger pressure on drinking water

Demand for drinking water is rising because of climate change, a growing population and the roughly 900,000 new homes the Netherlands plans to build by 2030. According to forecasts cited by the coalition, the country will need about 100 million cubic metres of extra drinking water a year by 2030.

The government has already set a target to bring average use down to 100 litres per person per day by 2035, from about 118 litres now, according to drinking water companies. The pressure was underlined in late April by the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (Raad voor de leefomgeving en infrastructuur), an official advisory body, which warned that the future availability of drinking water is under serious pressure from climate change, pollution, and population and economic growth.

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With the Netherlands in the middle of a spell of extreme heat, many people are looking to cool down in lakes, ponds and other open water. Before diving in, though, it is worth checking where it is safe to do so. Dozens of outdoor swimming spots across the country currently carry health warnings because of poor water quality.

Dozens of spots with warnings

As of this week, swimming was discouraged or banned at 38 outdoor locations because of poor water quality or blue-green algae. That number has nearly doubled since the swimming season opened. These figures are updated regularly and can shift from day to day.

The good news is that most water is fine. The Netherlands has around 950 official outdoor swimming locations, and the large majority remain safe to use. The warnings are spread unevenly: Noord-Holland has the most, with about ten, including lakes around Spaarnwoude and the Haarlemmermeerse Bos, while Limburg and Zeeland currently have no active warnings at all.

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Why heat makes the water worse

Prolonged hot weather tends to make water quality worse, because blue-green algae and bacteria grow faster in the warmth. For that reason, the quality of official swimming water is checked regularly throughout the season, which runs until 1 October.

Two main problems come up. Where general water quality is poor, often because of bacteria, there is a higher risk of stomach and intestinal complaints. The second is blue-green algae, known in Dutch as blauwalg. Despite the name, it is not really an algae but a type of bacteria (cyanobacteria) that can form a green or blue-green layer on the surface in warm weather. Some kinds produce toxins, and contact can cause skin irritation, red eyes, headaches and stomach problems. It can also be dangerous for dogs.

More than algae: the risks of open water

Water quality is not the only hazard. Rivers and large lakes can have strong currents and cold water even on hot days, which catch swimmers out. This week a 42-year-old woman died in the river Waal after rescuing children from the water, a reminder that open water carries risks beyond what is in it.

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How to swim safely

The simplest precaution is to use official swimming locations, where provinces and water authorities check the water during the season and post warnings both on signs at the location and online. Before setting off, you can check the current status of a specific spot on Zwemwater.nl, the national swimming water website, which lists for each location whether a warning, a negative swimming advice or a ban is in force, and why. Swimming at unofficial spots, where the water is not monitored, is generally discouraged, because there is no way to know whether it is clean and safe.

What the government advises in the heat

Cooling off in the water is only one part of getting through a heatwave safely. The National Heat Plan, a warning system run by the public health institute RIVM, is in force, and it comes with practical advice from the RIVM and the weather service KNMI.

People are advised to drink more than usual, even without feeling thirsty, and to keep their homes cool by closing curtains and windows during the day and airing rooms in the cooler early morning. Heavy physical activity is best avoided between noon and 6 pm, and it helps to stay in the shade and run errands earlier or later in the day. Because the sun is strong, sunscreen is recommended even under light cloud. People are also urged to keep an eye on those who are more vulnerable in the heat, especially older people, those with chronic illnesses and young children, and never to leave children or pets in a parked car, even briefly.

For those who do want to swim, the advice ties the two themes together: cool down at an official, monitored location or a supervised pool, and check the water quality first.

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The number of international child abductions to and from the Netherlands rose sharply in 2025. According to figures from the Centrum Internationale Kinderontvoering (Centrum IKO), the country’s legal expertise centre on the issue, there were 190 cases last year involving 270 children. A year earlier, there were 148 cases and 200 children.

A sharp rise in cases

The 270 children is 70 more than in 2024, an increase after the centre had reported a decline the year before. “The increased figures underline the importance of continued effort on help, prevention and awareness,” said Coşkun Çörüz, director of the Centrum IKO.

The term international child abduction refers to a specific situation: a child being taken to another country, or kept there, by one parent without the consent of the other parent who shares custody, and against the law of the country where the child normally lived. It is not the same as a stranger taking a child; in these cases the person responsible is almost always a parent.

Who takes the children, and where

In about three-quarters of the cases, the child was taken by the mother. Children who were taken from the Netherlands to another country most often ended up in Poland, followed by Spain and Syria. In cases where children were brought to the Netherlands, they came mainly from Spain, Belgium and Curaçao.

Spain and Syria are new entries in the top five destinations, which is part of what makes this year’s figures stand out.

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Why Spain and Syria are new

The Centrum IKO offers possible explanations for both. It links the rise of Spain to increased emigration from the Netherlands, which it connects to problems around housing and relationships and the rising cost of living. Some parents, the centre says, look for a fresh start in cheaper Spain. In the case of Syria, it says the cases often involve a father who wants to return there while the mother does not agree.

The centre also points to a common pattern behind many abductions: a period of tension within the family, in which parents become caught in conflicts that are hard to resolve.

A crime many parents do not recognise

A central message from the Centrum IKO is that many parents do not realise they are breaking the law. Taking a child across the border without the permission of the other parent with custody is a criminal offence, even when it is the child’s own parent doing so. “Too often we still hear parents say: what do you mean I am committing child abduction, I am taking my own child,” Çörüz said.

The Centrum IKO is an independent foundation, funded by the Ministry of Justice and Security, that gives free advice and information to parents, carers and professionals. It works with the Hague Child Abduction Convention, an international treaty meant to secure the prompt return of wrongfully removed children, and it also arranges cross-border mediation between parents in different countries.

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Where to get help

For families in cross-border situations, there are practical steps. When a child travels abroad, including with one parent, a friend’s family or a school group, they need permission from their custodial parent or parents. The Centrum IKO provides a consent form (toestemmingsformulier) on its website, and advises travellers to carry the completed form along with copies of the custodial parents’ identity documents to avoid delays at the border. The Koninklijke Marechaussee, the military police who handle border control, are familiar with the form.

Parents who are worried about a possible abduction, or who are facing one, can contact the Centrum IKO for free advice.

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The Netherlands is bracing for a spell of extreme heat this week, with temperatures climbing into the mid-30s and forecasters raising the possibility of a national record. The newspaper AD reported that there is a strong chance the country could see its first national “superhittegolf,” or super heatwave, with three days above 35°C.

What a super heatwave is

The term superhittegolf is not an official one. It was introduced by the weather service Weeronline in 2018 to describe an unusually extreme heatwave. To qualify, the maximum temperature has to reach 30°C or more on five days in a row, and on three of those days it has to climb to at least 35°C, what forecasters call a “zeer hete dag” (very hot day). A regular heatwave, the official measure, is lower: five consecutive days of at least 25°C at the De Bilt weather station, the national reference point, of which at least three reach 30°C.

A national super heatwave has never been recorded at De Bilt, although regional ones have happened, for example in the Limburg village of Arcen in 2003 and 2018, in Volkel in 2015, and at several stations in 2019 and 2020. Weeronline, which coined the term, is more measured about the national picture this week, but says several stations, especially in the southeast, could meet the conditions on Saturday. Like an ordinary heatwave, a super heatwave can only be confirmed after the fact.

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How hot, and when

The KNMI, the national weather institute, has issued code oranje, its second-highest warning level, for extreme heat in the middle and south of the country from Wednesday 24 June until at least Friday 26 June. In those areas, highs of 33 to 36°C are expected from Wednesday, and Friday could be the hottest day; KNMI forecasts up to 38°C, while Weeronline points to 37 to 39°C inland. In the northern provinces of Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe, the milder code geel (yellow) applies, with afternoon temperatures of 28 to 33°C.

The nights will offer little relief. In the larger cities, temperatures are expected to stay between 22 and 27°C overnight, the kind of warm, sticky conditions that make it hard for the body to recover. The KNMI’s new heat-stress index, called hittekracht, which combines temperature, humidity, wind and sunshine on a scale from 0 to 10, is forecast to reach 9 to 10 in the middle and south.

A possible record-long June heatwave

Beyond the heat itself, forecasters are watching the calendar. Weeronline expects the official national heatwave to begin on Wednesday or Thursday and to last at least into the weekend. If the warmth continues into the following week, the company says, it could become the longest June heatwave on record. The current record for the month is eight heatwave days, set in June 1976 and June 1936.

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Health risks and the National Heat Plan

The National Heat Plan, a warning system run by the public health institute RIVM, is in force. It is meant to prompt extra attention for people who are more at risk in the heat, especially those over 75, people with chronic illnesses, socially isolated people and young children, whose bodies regulate temperature less well.

The advice is practical. People are urged to check on vulnerable neighbours and relatives, to drink more than usual even without feeling thirsty, to keep homes cool by closing curtains and windows during the day, and to avoid heavy physical activity between noon and 6 pm. Forecasters also warn of very strong sun, with a UV strength high enough to cause sunburn within 10 to 15 minutes around the middle of the day.

The bigger picture

The KNMI places the heat in the context of a changing climate. According to the institute, the chance of the temperatures expected this week is now about three times greater than it was a little over a century ago, and the current heat has become roughly 2.5°C warmer since measurements began in 1901. The highest temperature ever recorded in the Netherlands remains 40.7°C, measured on 25 July 2019 in Gilze-Rijen.

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The UWV, the Dutch government agency that handles employee insurance and tracks the labour market, has published its annual overview of which jobs offer the best and worst chances of finding work in the Netherlands. The message is mixed: the severe staff shortages of recent years have eased, but across much of the economy there are still more jobs than people looking for them.

“After the coronavirus pandemic, the labour market became very tight. In 2023 there were really unprecedented shortages,” said Stef Molleman, a labour market adviser at the UWV. “That has eased somewhat in recent years, but on balance there is still a shortage.”

The jobs on the rise

Many of the strongest fields have been in demand for years and are expected to stay that way. The UWV points in particular to construction, energy and installation technology, transport and logistics, healthcare and hospitality.

Several new roles joined the promising list in 2026. At MBO level (vocational education and training), these include bricklayers and pointers, veterinary assistants, and sales staff in second-hand shops. At HBO and WO level (universities of applied sciences and research universities), they include budget consultants, facility managers and event managers.

The reasons lie in wider changes in society, according to the UWV. “Because of the booming new construction, the expansion of the electricity grid, and the necessary maintenance of bridges and roads, jobs such as bricklayer, road construction machine operator and construction assistant have become promising,” Molleman said. The agency links the demand for veterinary assistants to the many pets that people took in during the pandemic, and says a rise in problem debt has created a shortage of debt-counselling staff. The popularity of second-hand shopping is another factor. “The second-hand segment has become very popular. Vintage stores are popping up everywhere,” Molleman said, which is creating openings for sales staff in those shops.

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Where AI is cutting opportunities

At the other end of the list, the UWV says artificial intelligence is steadily reducing the number of openings in several fields. Last year this was already visible for graphic designers, translators and copywriters. This year the agency adds advertising roles, as well as customer service work, where chatbots are taking over tasks once done by people. The UWV also notes that AI plays a part in the falling demand for photographers.

On the jobs most affected by AI, the UWV goes further and advises against training for them at all. “We currently advise against seeking your future in these kinds of professions,” Molleman said. “Because of the further development of AI, the job prospects there are really poor for the future.”

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Not only AI: too many applicants

Not every decline is down to technology. The UWV stresses that a job can also fall off the promising list simply because demand drops or because too many people want to do it. It points to a surplus of job seekers for roles such as animal carers and life coaches, and notes that companies appear to have less budget for outside training, which weighs on demand for communication-skills trainers.

Some roles that were previously promising have now left the list for similar reasons. These include police officers, policy advisers in the social domain, secondary-school teachers in social studies subjects, and lecturers in economics and law at universities of applied sciences and research universities.

How to check your own prospects

For people weighing up a career move, the UWV offers free tools. Its careers helper (beroepskeuzehulp) lets users search for jobs with strong prospects in their own region and see which vacancies match their skills, while a separate Skills dashboard shows the tasks and skills that go with promising occupations. The agency says the information can also help professionals advise others on retraining or upskilling.

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Housing problems among international students in the Netherlands are getting worse, according to the Landelijke Studentenvakbond (LSVb), the national student union. The union bases its warning on 263 requests for help that reached its Housing Hotline, an advice line for international students, this year.

What students are reporting

The reports cover a wide range of problems, from illegal lettings and unhygienic rooms to online fraud. Some students described living in rooms without heating, a working sink or windows. Others paid large deposits for rooms they found online, only to discover they had been scammed. The union says many did not dare to ask for help, or did not know how to.

The LSVb received several examples of distressing living situations. One student said they live in a small, windowless room with a hole in the wall, without an official rental contract, for €725 a month. Another, quoted by RTV Utrecht, said a housemate had been bitten by bedbugs in her bed; according to the student, the rental company and the landlord did not respond when contacted.

Why internationals are especially at risk

International students are often more exposed than Dutch students, the union says. They usually cannot fall back on a parental home nearby, and they tend to know less about local rules and where to turn for support. “Students often don’t really know where to get help,” said Maaike Krom, who currently chairs the LSVb, in comments to AD. Out of desperation, she said, some students accept whatever they can find, which gives scammers room to take advantage.

Evy Kras, who takes over as the union’s chair at the end of June, links the problem to the wider housing shortage. “The problem is partly caused by the severe housing shortage. International students are therefore forced to choose landlords who break almost every rule,” she said.

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Fewer places to turn for help

The union says the situation has been made worse by the disappearance of so-called huurteams (rental teams) in university cities such as Utrecht and Rotterdam. These teams inform Dutch and international students about their rights and can spot problems on the rental market at an early stage.

“Rental rights on paper often do not yet mean rental rights in practice,” Kras said. She called the teams essential for students trying to challenge unfair situations, and said cutting them during a housing crisis was hard to justify. The LSVb wants universities and colleges to do more to inform international students about their rights and where they can go for help.

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A shrinking international student population

The warning comes as the government has spent several years trying to reduce the number of international students in the Netherlands. Recently, that number fell for the first time in two decades. Some institutions, including in Amsterdam and Utrecht, have advised prospective international students not to come if they have not arranged a place to live.

Where to get help

For students who are struggling, there are formal routes. The Housing Hotline offers internationals advice on spotting scams and on checking whether a rent is lawful. Most student rooms in the Netherlands have a maximum legal rent, set through a national points system that scores a room on features such as size and facilities. Tenants who believe they are being overcharged can ask the Huurcommissie, the national rent tribunal, to assess the rent and, where appropriate, lower it.

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The Dutch government’s plans for a sugar tax on soft drinks could also push up the price of beer, according to a report in De Telegraaf based on a letter from the Cabinet and conversations with insiders. The newspaper says beer would become more expensive not because it contains sugar, but because its price is linked to the price of soft drinks. A one-litre bottle of cola would cost around 25 cents more, and a crate of beer about €1 more.

Why beer is caught up in a sugar tax

The connection is about how drinks are priced rather than what is in them. Beer itself would not be taxed for its sugar content; instead, its price would move together with the price of soft drinks. The Netherlands already has a consumption tax on non-alcoholic drinks (in Dutch, the “verbruiksbelasting”), which applies to almost all soft drinks. According to the government, producers currently pay €0.26 per litre, and the tax covers products such as soft drinks, fruit juices and alcohol-free beer; mineral water, dairy and soy drinks are exempt.xt

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What the sugar tax is meant to do

The sugar tax (in Dutch, “suikertaks”) is part of the coalition agreement of the Jetten I Cabinet, the document the governing parties drew up when they formed the government. It would apply to products containing more than 6 percent sugar. The Cabinet expects it to raise around €900 million and to encourage people to make healthier choices. Sophie Hermans, the Minister of Public Health, Welfare and Sport, and Eelco Eerenberg, the State Secretary for Finance, are working out how it could be introduced. According to the Telegraaf, the Cabinet expects some pushback from fruit juice manufacturers, but hopes that a sugar tax on soft drinks would be relatively straightforward to bring in.

This kind of measure is not new internationally. The weekly EW notes that the United Kingdom has had a tiered levy on sugary soft drinks since 2018, which led many manufacturers to lower the sugar content of their products, while France has taxed sweetened drinks since 2012 and Belgium since 2016. Denmark introduced a similar tax but scrapped it in 2014 after running into practical problems.

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A tax that is hard to design

Taxing soft drinks is one thing; taxing the sugar in food is harder. Insiders told the Telegraaf that applying a sugar tax to the sugar content of food products would be far more complicated. They compared it to an earlier plan to cut the VAT (value added tax) on fruit and vegetables to zero. In 2023, researchers from SEO Economisch Onderzoek advised the government to drop that plan, warning that every version of it carried major legal and practical risks, including questions over which products to include and the high cost of carrying it out.

There is a clear difference between the two ideas. The VAT plan was also meant to steer people toward healthier food, but it would have made those groceries cheaper. The sugar tax, by contrast, works by making certain products more expensive.

Higher prices on the shelves

The news comes as shoppers are already being warned about rising costs. Earlier this month, the supermarket association CBL said grocery prices could rise by 10 percent next year, partly because of government measures including the sugar tax, new tolls for trucks, and energy levies.

For now, the plan is still being worked out and would need to go through the usual legislative process before it takes effect, so the exact rates and timing could still change.

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Severe thunderstorms moved across the Netherlands on Friday evening and overnight into Saturday, leaving damage in dozens of places and one person dead. Weather service KNMI had issued code oranje, the second-highest warning level, which signals a strong chance of dangerous weather; it applied to the middle and north of the country until 2:00 AM.

A fatal accident near Coevorden

In the village of ‘t Haantje, near Coevorden in the province of Drenthe, a 25-year-old woman from Joure died when a tree fell on her car at around 00:15. The police said emergency services were unable to save her and that she died at the scene.

Damage, fires and flooding

The storms brought frequent lightning, hard wind gusts and, in some places, hailstones around two centimetres across. Police and fire services in Flevoland, Utrecht, Gooi en Vechtstreek and Twente received a large number of calls. In the central Netherlands, authorities sent out an NL-Alert (an emergency warning sent to mobile phones), telling people in Flevoland and neighbouring municipalities to stay indoors and to call the emergency number 112 only in life-threatening situations. A spokesperson said the control room (in Dutch, the “meldkamer”) was overwhelmed with reports of trees on roads and roof sections blown loose.

Lightning set several buildings alight, including a house in Leek, in Groningen, which burned out after a strike. In Zwolle, part of the roof of a postal sorting centre collapsed; according to NOS, this was caused by the combination of pooled rainwater and strong wind. In Mander, in Twente, the grounds around a watermill flooded during a wedding, and all 150 guests and the couple reached safety. The strongest gust of the night, 113 km/h, was measured in Vlissingen, according to weather site Buienradar.

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Disruption to trains and events

The weather caused problems on the railways, with trees and branches on the tracks in several places. No trains ran between Geldermalsen and Den Bosch after the overhead power line was damaged, and the route between Hoogeveen and Beilen was blocked by a fallen tree. Between Zuidbroek and Veendam, fewer trains ran and passengers faced delays. The Julianapop festival in Julianadorp was cancelled after storm damage to the site, with organisers saying the event could not go ahead safely and that ticket holders would be informed later.

Across the border in Rastatt, Germany, near the French border, at least nine people were injured by a lightning strike during a sports event, according to local police; six were taken to hospital, and none had life-threatening injuries.

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Storms after the year’s warmest day

The storms followed the warmest day of 2026 so far. In Ell, in Limburg, the temperature reached 35.1°C in the late afternoon: the first “zeer hete dag” (very hot day, meaning 35°C or higher) of the year, and the highest temperature measured anywhere in the country this year, according to Weeronline. At the main weather station in De Bilt, which is used for official national records, the temperature reached 31.4°C, the warmest reading there so far in 2026. It was the highest temperature ever recorded on 19 June in the Netherlands, but it did not count as an official national record, because the figure at De Bilt was not exceeded. The national heat plan, a government programme run by health institute RIVM that warns people during hot spells, stayed in place over the weekend. The warm weather is expected to continue into next week, although KNMI said the chance of thunderstorms decreased overnight.

If you come across storm damage that is not an emergency, contact your regional fire brigade rather than calling 112, which should be kept free for life-threatening situations.

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A draft EU proposal to do away with dividend tax between European companies could pull the rug out from under the Dutch government’s planned reform of its wealth tax, Box 3, tax experts have warned. The proposal, first reported in De Telegraaf, would make investing through a private limited company (besloten vennootschap, or BV) considerably more attractive than holding shares privately. Tax academics say it could leave a hole of billions of euros in the Dutch treasury.

The Dutch box system

Dutch income tax sorts income into three “boxes.” Box 1 covers income from work and from your own home. Box 2 covers income from a “substantial interest” in a company, typically when someone owns at least 5 percent of a BV, the Dutch private limited company. Box 3 covers wealth held by private individuals: savings, investments and second homes.

For most ordinary savers, Box 3 is the relevant box. In 2026, the first €59,357 of wealth per person is tax-free, and anything above that is taxed at 36 percent on an assumed (fictitious) return. Investors with a substantial interest in a BV are instead taxed in Box 2, with the company paying corporate income tax on its profits and the owner paying around 31 percent on the dividend they pay themselves.

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What is changing in Box 3 in 2028

From 1 January 2028, the Netherlands is set to introduce a new Box 3 regime, the Wet werkelijk rendement box 3. Instead of being taxed on an assumed return, private investors will be taxed on their actual return at 36 percent. Crucially, that “actual return” is intended to include “paper gains”: increases in the value of shares and other investments, even if the owner has not sold. State secretary for finance Eelco Heinen has confirmed in a letter to the Senate that the cabinet sticks to its 1 January 2028 start, and has explicitly rejected an alternative withholding tax model based on the German system.

The reform is controversial in its own right. Investor associations and tax specialists warn that taxing unrealised gains can force people to sell shares (or borrow) simply to pay the tax bill, and that even cautious savers may end up with a higher annual tax bill than under the previous, simpler system.

The Brussels twist

According to a draft proposal from EU tax commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the European Commission wants to encourage cross-border investment by, from 2028, ending dividend tax between European companies in almost all cases. At the moment, EU rules allow companies to receive dividends tax-free from another company only if they hold at least 10 percent of the shares; under the new plan, that threshold would disappear and the exemption would apply to all corporate share holdings, regardless of size.

Brussels’ aim is to deepen Europe’s capital market and reduce barriers to investment between member states. Max Velthoven, a tax expert at EY, told De Telegraaf that the current rules are “a brake” on cross-border investment: “If, say, it is difficult for me to invest in Italy, that holds back investment within the EU.”

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Why the proposal “turns Box 3 upside down”

For Dutch private investors, the combination of Brussels’ plan and the new Box 3 system could be transformative, tax experts say. If dividends between European companies become essentially tax-free, an investor with a BV could buy shares through their company, receive dividends tax-free at the company level, and only pay the 31 percent Box 2 rate when they actually pay themselves a dividend. Compared with a Box 3 tax of 36 percent every year on actual and paper gains, that becomes substantially more attractive.

Jan van de Streek, professor of fiscal law, calls the European direction “really very radical” and warns that it “turns the entire system upside down.” Erasmus University tax economist Peter Kavelaars says he sees “a pull towards Box 2” already, and that the EU plan would only reinforce it. The risk for the Dutch treasury is twofold: less direct revenue from Box 3, and a possible new round of fiscal “constructions” in which investment gains are reshaped as dividend income from a BV.

A long way from law

The proposal is, for now, a draft. EU tax measures need the unanimous backing of all 27 member states to pass, and many capitals are nervously eyeing their own budgets in a period of high deficits and rising debt. Hoekstra’s idea would mean less national tax revenue almost everywhere, which is itself a major hurdle. Even within the European context, the proposal fits a wider EU effort to make the bloc more attractive to investment and prevent capital from flowing to the United States.

For most people in the Netherlands, nothing changes in the short term. The existing Box 3 transitional law applies until the new “actual return” system kicks in. For wealthier investors with substantial portfolios, however, the question of whether to set up a BV will start to bear down more sharply over the coming years. Setting up a BV also brings its own administrative costs, accounting obligations and exit taxes, so the choice is rarely as simple as a pure tax comparison.

What is clear is that the new Box 3 system is coming under pressure from several directions at once. As Van de Streek put it in De Telegraaf, the Brussels plan could leave it standing “on its head” before it has even properly started.

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The Dutch police did not handle more than 10,000 reports of serious crime in 2024, roughly a quarter of all such reports, according to a new investigation by the Algemene Rekenkamer (the country’s Court of Audit) published on Wednesday. The findings have prompted fresh debate over police capacity, the prioritisation of investigations, and the question of why a force with an annual budget of €8.1 billion struggles to follow up on cases that include violent crimes, the production of hard drugs and identity fraud.

The headline figures

Of the more than 10,000 serious-crime reports left unattended, about 7,000 were rejected outright by the police, while around 3,000 were initially taken on but later dropped because of a shortage of capacity at the police or the Public Prosecution Service (OM). About 1,600 of those untreated cases were on the priority lists set by the OM or the Justice and Security minister. The police as a whole registered more than 791,000 new crimes in 2024.

The categories of crime left unprocessed make for sobering reading. They include violent offences (”high-impact crimes” such as burglaries, robberies and assaults), sexual offences, the manufacture of hard drugs and identity fraud. “The police cannot do everything, but you would at least want the most serious cases to be taken on,” said Ewout Irrgang, who led the investigation for the Court of Audit.

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Big differences between regions

The picture also varies sharply by region. In Rotterdam, 19 percent of serious-crime reports were rejected outright, compared with 11 percent in Limburg and 12 percent in Oost-Nederland. The pattern is reversed for cases that were taken on but then dropped: 13 percent in Limburg, against 8 percent in Oost-Nederland and 7 percent in Rotterdam.

Where the money goes, and where it doesn’t

The Rekenkamer estimates that around €3.3 billion (41 percent) of the police’s €8.1 billion budget went to investigation work in 2024, with the rest going to public-order and safety duties, emergency assistance and other tasks for the justice system. The exact breakdown is itself unclear, however, because the police’s accounting is not set up to separate spending by statutory task. As a result, neither the minister nor the police chief has hard numbers on how much of the budget actually goes to investigation, or what those investigations have produced.

In 2024, the police carried out almost 12,000 investigations using more than 12,300 full-time equivalents, but did not systematically track whether those investigations led to arrests, prosecutions or any other intervention. “That makes it difficult to make strategic choices about how to deploy people and money,” the audit office warned.

Competing priorities

The Rekenkamer points to a tangle of competing priorities as a major reason for the backlog. The minister of justice and security sets one set of priorities via the Veiligheidsagenda, the Public Prosecution Service sets another via its Aanwijzing voor de opsporing, and regional and local triangles of mayor, police and prosecutor set further accents. Because police capacity is finite, those priorities, the audit office says, often end up competing with each other.

The audit office found that, in some cases, “crimes of relatively low severity are given priority over more serious offences, or offences with greater social harm.” As an example, the minister prioritises cybercrime and “digitised” criminality, while many such offences score low or medium on the Crime Harm Index (a measure of the actual harm caused).

The pressure has also shifted within the police. Because district detective offices and regional and national investigation teams are overloaded, serious crimes such as burglaries, robberies, sexual offences and violent crimes increasingly fall to local “basisteams” (neighbourhood police teams), which the Inspection of Justice and Security warned last year are not really equipped for that workload.

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The ministry’s response

In their reaction, justice and security minister David van Weel and national police chief Janny Knol acknowledge that “improvements are needed in detection work and in making choices in detection.” Van Weel stresses that the police’s investigative task is “complex,” the field is “extensive” and the capacity “scarce.” He has also said he wants more insight into spending and results, and is “exploring” what further steps to take.

Irrgang of the Rekenkamer called the ministry’s reaction “defensive” and “a pity,” and urged the minister to sit around the table with the OM and the police as quickly as possible to make the choices the audit office argues are now overdue.

A familiar Dutch picture

The findings land against an already strained Dutch public-safety picture. CBS figures show that almost 3 million people in the Netherlands became victims of “traditional” crime (violence, sexual offences and property crimes) in 2025, while 17 percent of the population also dealt with one or more forms of online crime. The latest Safety Monitor showed that only 31 percent of people are satisfied with police visibility in their neighbourhood, that 37 percent sometimes feel unsafe, and that aggression against officers is at record levels.

For now, the practical implication of the Rekenkamer’s report is clear: even when Dutch police register a report of a serious crime, there is a significant chance, especially in certain regions, that no investigation will follow.

This is a sensitive topic. People in the Netherlands who have been affected by a crime can contact Slachtofferhulp Nederland on 0900-0101 (free and confidential) for emotional, practical and legal support, in addition to filing a report at the police via 0900-8844 or, in an emergency, 112.