Former ASML CEO Peter Wennink has identified €126bn in investment potential across four strategic technology domains, but argues regulatory barriers are blocking deployment.
His deregulation proposals have drawn warnings from academics and government advisors about risks to fundamental rights and scientific rigour.
Wennink’s report, commissioned by the Dutch government and published on 12 December, argues the Netherlands needs annual economic growth of at least 1.5% to maintain public services. The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) projects growth of just 0.5-0.9% annually.
Based on those projections, Wennink models a potential €100bn budget gap by 2035 if current policies remain unchanged, stressing this is his scenario built on CPB projections rather than a CPB estimate.
The former ASML executive consulted over 1,000 experts who developed 51 concrete project proposals representing €126bn in potential investment. These span four domains: digitisation and artificial intelligence (AI), life sciences and biotechnology; energy and climate technology; and security and resilience. Some 12 projects focus specifically on digital technology, from semiconductor manufacturing to AI applications.
Wennink argued the possible investments are stalling due to regulatory constraints. In Amsterdam’s metropolitan region, available datacentre capacity has dropped from 24% to 9% in five years, according to figures in his report. Amsterdam’s city council announced in 2024 that it would issue no new datacentre permits until 2035 due to electricity grid problems.
“Every day that necessary choices are postponed costs the Netherlands more than the investments now required,” Wennink wrote in the report’s foreword.
His proposed solutions centre on removing what he terms accumulated regulatory barriers: accelerating permit processes, resolving nitrogen emission restrictions that block factory construction, and introducing regulatory sandboxes for strategic innovations. In practice, those nitrogen rules cap emissions near protected nature areas and have frozen many industrial and infrastructure projects across the country.
He recommends establishing a National Investment Bank with €10-20bn in working capital, creating a National Agency for Breakthrough Innovation with a €2bn budget, and appointing a Commissioner for Future Prosperity with cross-departmental powers to override normal procedures for strategic projects.
Think tank warns against ‘innovation simplism’
Six days after Wennink’s report launched, the Rathenau Institute published a response warning against what it termed “innovation simplism”. The government-funded organisation, which advises Dutch parliament on science and technology policy, argues that focusing solely on economic growth ignores three other essential government innovation tasks.
Eefje Cuppen (director), Jasper Deuten (research coordinator for innovation) and Rinie van Est (research coordinator for digitisation and climate) wrote that government must also drive innovation for societal challenges such as healthcare and education, ensure social embedding of new technologies, and regulate risks.
“We don’t want AI applications that undermine democracy,” they wrote, pointing to concerns about rushed deregulation in digital policy.
The think tank cites two specific regulatory areas where it argues deregulation poses risks. Rathenau warns that the Digital Omnibus, a European Commission initiative to streamline digital regulation, could threaten fundamental rights if simplification weakens existing protections. The organisation also questions proposed relaxation of gene editing rules for crops, arguing this primarily benefits large multinational corporations.
“The question is therefore where and for whom simplifying regulation leads to economic growth,” the Rathenau authors wrote.
They note that civil society organisations were absent from Wennink’s advisory group. “The absence of societal parties in the sounding board group of Wennink’s report is in that light a missed opportunity,” they argue, saying diverse perspectives create additional innovation possibilities over time.
The Rathenau response points to the Oosterscheldekering storm surge barrier and Dutch cycling infrastructure as examples where government-led innovation delivered limited economic growth but major societal value. “Where for Wennink innovations in the public sector and societal challenges are seen primarily as conditional for economic growth, with this task the societal challenges are leading,” they wrote.
Academic opinion divides on approach
Barbara Baarsma, professor of applied economics at the University of Amsterdam and chief economist at PwC, told Dutch business magazine MT/Sprout that the report correctly identifies the problem, but prescribes the wrong remedy.
“The Wennink report shows that the Netherlands doesn’t have a shortage of investment money, but of well-organised preconditions,” she said. “The reflex to reach for sector policy and subsidies is understandable, but ultimately counterproductive.”
Baarsma advocates what she terms generic policy that enables innovation across the economy: sufficient skilled talent, reliable energy infrastructure and a functioning labour market. In a blog post for PwC, she wrote that the real question is whether the Netherlands will “get the basic conditions in order, and dare to finally sharpen the framework conditions to get creative destruction going”.
Bas Jacobs, professor of public economics at VU University Amsterdam, was more critical. Speaking to BNR Nieuwsradio, he called the report “sloppy” and said it lacked scientific rigour. “I think a number of legitimate concerns are raised by Wennink about the Dutch economy, and quite a few recommendations are OK,” Jacobs said to BNR. “But I was disappointed when I looked at the report’s scientific hardness and the foundation of the analyses.”
In subsequent interviews with NPO Radio 1 and BNR Nieuwsradio, Wennink defended his approach while acknowledging constraints. He told BNR the tight timeline limited stakeholder consultation: “We had effectively two months.”
On accusations of insufficient attention to social concerns, he argued that economic growth enables rather than undermines social provisions. “You can only keep the promise of healthcare and education if you first make the pie bigger,” he said.
The business community and several technical universities have largely backed Wennink’s analysis. VNO-NCW, the Dutch employers’ federation, stated that the report “shows clearly that the Netherlands only remains competitive if the cabinet chooses for economic growth”. Agricultural organisation LTO Nederland connected Wennink’s findings to its November call for reduced regulation and investment in the food sector.
Delft University of Technology welcomed the report’s emphasis on technical knowledge. “Peter Wennink’s advice makes unequivocally clear that investments in technology are crucial for our future earning capacity,” said Tim van der Hagen, chair of TU Delft’s executive board, in a blog on the university’s website, though he noted the university requires “stable funding for our education, research and knowledge valorisation” to deliver on these ambitions.
European competitiveness context
Wennink’s report translates Mario Draghi’s 2024 report on EU competitiveness to Dutch circumstances. Draghi documented how Europe’s investment gap with the US has widened from 36% in 2010 to 76% in 2022 – a difference of €700bn annually in capital expenditure and R&D spending by large companies, according to McKinsey Global Institute data cited in Wennink’s report.
The Netherlands faces specific constraints despite ranking fifth in Europe by GDP. Wennink’s report states that the country can build hyperscale datacentres in just two of its 342 municipalities. Grid congestion means thousands of businesses are waiting for electricity connections. The nitrogen regulatory framework effectively blocks new industrial facilities in many locations.
The Netherlands’ compact geography and dense regulation make its constraints particularly acute, though Wennink’s report echoes themes from Draghi’s European competitiveness analysis about balancing deregulation with public interest protection.
The then-caretaker Dutch government commissioned Wennink’s report in September to inform economic policy discussions. Former ASML executive Wennink, who also previously worked as a partner at Deloitte, presented his findings on 12 December, after October’s elections had already triggered a new cabinet formation process.
The Netherlands is now forming a minority cabinet led by centrist parties D66, CDA and VVD, which will determine whether to implement his recommendations. These include governance changes that would give a proposed Commissioner for Future Prosperity legal authority to accelerate projects and break through what Wennink calls interdepartmental blockages.
For international technology companies operating in or considering the Netherlands, the outcome has practical implications for grid connection timelines, datacentre restrictions and potential AI regulatory sandboxes.
