It concerns the so-called Stap Budget, which was opened by the Cabinet on March 1. The crowd was so great that the folks at UWV ended up in the digital queue and the website was down for some time. According to a UWV spokesperson, at one point 70,000 people tried to apply at the same time.

That is more orders than there is money for. This year the government made €160 million available. This will be distributed over five periods by the UWV, the first of which is now running. A spokesperson expects that tens of millions of euros from this round will be cleared on Wednesday. Then a new opportunity to apply for the budget will come in May.

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The Stap budget replaces the training tax deduction, in which individuals can claim a portion of their costs through a tax return. “People like you and me can make good use of that,” says Minister Van Genneep (Social Affairs). But the resolution was not a solution for everyone, according to the Minister of the Civil Society Union. “If you pay less taxes, you won’t be able to benefit from it either. Besides, you first had to pay the money up front and only get it back later from the IRS. This is a handicap for many people.”

As a result, self-reliant people are often the ones who continue to develop, as Van Gennep saw during her tenure. “We also hope to get to the group that is unlikely to take this step themselves.”

Anyone ‘related to the Dutch labor market’ can apply for a budget Stap. Van Gennep also stresses that they are self-employed. Training should be career-oriented.