Wednesday is Accountability Day in The Hague. You can see that day as the counterpart of Prinsjesdag, but without festivities. The cabinet is accountable to parliament for the previous year. The Court of Audit checks whether all ministers had their affairs in order.
On this day we do not look forward like on Prinsjesdag, but look back. So this time on the year 2022. What were the plans, what was achieved and what were the costs? In other words: has the tax money paid by citizens been spent correctly?
On this day, the Minister of Finance presents reports to the House of Representatives in a special briefcase. The MPs can then start sifting through these documents and carry out their monitoring task.
The Court of Audit plays a major role on this day. This institute monitors the expenditure of the national government. On Accountability Day, the Court of Audit issues an opinion for each ministry. Are things well organized? Has the money been collected and spent according to the rules?
In recent years, the government has had to take quite a bit of criticism from the Court of Audit. The institute then speaks of “imperfections”, which is jargon for abuses. Last year, the Court of Audit discovered a total of 46 for the year 2021. Almost 5 percent of the government’s financial obligations were unlawful. In fact, this percentage should not exceed 1 percent. This amounted to a total of 15.5 billion euros.
The Court of Auditors warned of a worrying trend, as government spending was not in order for the third year in a row. This while the government had known good financial management for many years.
This is not only due to the corona pandemic, for which the Court of Auditors still showed understanding. As early as 2019, the cabinet’s housekeeping book was not in order. Wopke Hoekstra, who was Minister of Finance at the time, then acted unlawfully when the cabinet decided to take a share in Air France-KLM. The Chamber was not fully informed of this.
In the weeks following Accountability Day, a debate will take place in the House of Representatives. The Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister will in any case be present.
If things have gone very wrong at a ministry, a minister must also be held accountable for it. He or she should then explain how the problems are addressed and resolved.
The annual reports of all ministries are then dealt with as bills by parliament. If the House of Representatives and the Senate adopt the bills, the budget year will be closed.
2023-05-17 03:10:00
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