The Dutch parliament has voted against two motions which might have blunted the effect of the budget cuts facing Radio Netherlands Worldwide. One motion called for a separate debate devoted to the future of RNW. Previous debates tackled the cutbacks facing all public broadcasting. The other criticised the decision-making as hasty and called for a postponement.Effectively, this vote means that the cabinet’s plans to move RNW from the education, media and culture ministry to the foreign ministry and cut the budget from 46.3 million euros to 14 million will definitely go ahead. RNW’s management will now draw up a redundancy plan, which is expected to be completed in October.
(Source: RNW News/R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)