NLdigital Pushes for Netherlands as Europe's Hub for Digital Innovation
Amsterdam, Friday, 1 August 2025.
NLdigital’s manifesto aims to transform the Netherlands into Europe’s leading digital innovator by emphasizing stable regulations and massive digital investments to triple productivity growth.
Key Components of the Manifesto
NLdigital’s election manifesto, launched on 21 July 2025, outlines concrete strategies to position the Netherlands as a top digital innovator. The initiative underscores two main priorities: restoring the entrepreneurial climate for digital companies and significantly investing in digital transformation. Part of this strategy involves leveraging existing incentives, like the WBSO (Research and Development Tax Credit) and the 30% tax ruling for knowledgeable migrants, to boost innovation and attract international talent [1][2].
Addressing Economic Challenges
The digital sector, which accounts for 6% of the Netherlands’ GDP, is expected to spearhead economic growth. The manifesto emphasizes the sector’s role in solving critical economic issues by inducing a productivity growth tripling, essential for sustaining current healthcare, pensions, and old-age benefits, as highlighted by Klaas Knot, President of the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) [1][3]. Such growth is vital to maintain the country’s welfare without depleting resources [1].
Infrastructure Development
Enhancing digital infrastructure is pivotal, as the manifesto calls for new investments in data centers and modernizing network facilities to overcome existing bottlenecks, such as network congestion and inadequate fiber-optic networks. This is essential for fostering a robust digital economy that can support cutting-edge technology implementations like artificial intelligence (AI) [3][4]. These improvements require collaboration between municipalities and tech companies to ensure that data handling capacities meet future demands [2].
Education and Workforce Needs
To meet future digital demands, significant emphasis is placed on education reform, advocating for the accelerated integration of digital literacy in curriculums before the planned 2026-2027 timeline. This forward-thinking approach seeks to address the anticipated 1.4 million skilled worker shortage by 2030. Essential to this strategy is a national retraining initiative focusing on equipping workers with AI skills, crucial for competing in the global digital economy [3][4].