The Netherlands Court of Audit, together with the Czech Supreme Audit Office, has launched an initiative to explore in 2026 how national audit institutions, alongside the European Court of Auditors, can cooperate more effectively in auditing EU funds. The Court announced the initiative in a letter to the House of Representatives, published alongside an update of its web pages on the European Union.
This cooperation is needed because the European Court of Auditors provides an opinion on the use of EU funds at the level of the European Union as a whole, but does not publish an annual overview of the situation in each individual Member State.
As a result, there is no clear picture of the accuracy of expenditure in individual Member States, making it difficult to determine where problems are most significant. This makes it impossible to hold Member States with high error rates properly to account. At the same time, insufficient recognition is given to countries that manage EU funds effectively. Moreover, the current system provides little incentive for learning and improvement.
Mandatory reporting by Member State never materialised
For this reason, the European Union debated in the early years of this century whether each Member State should be required to publicly account for how EU funds had been spent. Such an obligation never materialised.
In the Netherlands, accountability for EU funds is currently provided through annexes to the annual reports of the ministries concerned. This means that, unlike at EU level, there is insight into the accuracy of expenditure at Member State level. The Netherlands Court of Audit is able to examine this accountability as part of its annual Accountability Audit.
According to figures published by the European Commission, the Netherlands paid an average of approximately €9 billion per year to the EU between 2020 and 2024. During the same period, the country received an average of approximately €3 billion per year in EU funding. In addition, the Netherlands received €1.3 billion from the EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility in 2024.
Since the mid-1990s, the Netherlands has contributed more to the EU budget than it has received from it and is therefore a net contributor.
Update at the end of 2026
The Netherlands Court of Audit hopes that this initiative with its Czech counterparts will lead to greater transparency regarding European revenues and expenditure.
The European Court of Auditors has never issued an unqualified audit opinion on the implementation of the EU budget. For many years, the overall error rate has exceeded the agreed threshold of 2% of total EU expenditure.
The Court hopes that this initiative will help bring an end to this long-standing problem.
At the end of 2026, the Netherlands Court of Audit will report on the progress of the cooperation in the next update of its EU web pages.