“Over the past two years, the Court of Auditors has given an unsatisfactory score and I expect that this year too, despite the promises of Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag to put the government’s financial management in order with a task force,” says Beekman .
‘Cabinet spends more money than budgeted, more than 40 billion’
Accountability Day, also known as minced meat day, is therefore the counterpart to the Prinsjesdag: no proposals are submitted, but already announced plans are checked. It’s gone wrong on several occasions, Beekman thinks. ‘Cabinet is spending more money than budgeted, more than $40 billion.’ More painful is that half of that amount is spent without the permission of parliament. “This is formally possible, but really only in a crisis situation.”
Without permission
According to MPs, that budget right is too often violated. “The VVD was already very angry about this last year, independent MP Pieter Omtzigt talks about it very often,” says Beekman.
“There seems to be common sense, let’s just do this”
According to SGP MP Chris Stoffer, this cannot continue. “The money is just being spent without the House approving it.” He sees a habit emerging in the toilet, “sort of common sense, let’s just do it.” As for Stoffer, “all 150 members of parliament” must make a point during the spring memorandum debate. “We shouldn’t want to,” he says in conversation with Beekman.
A large part of the extra expenses were incurred in connection with the corona crisis, both at the Ministry of Health and at the Ministry of Economy. ‘Think of high energy bills and support for entrepreneurs.’
Under-exhaustion
The House also criticized the large amount of unspent money. It is awarded, but not spent. This so-called underutilisation is estimated by the CPB at nine billion euros.
According to Henk Nijboer (PvdA) a “big problem”. ‘The Cabinet says it will invest heavily in the company, knowing in advance that is not possible. Subsequently, cuts are needed to solve the budget problems, but parliament can no longer control this way.’
This is a somewhat cynical view, thinks Pieter Grinwis of ChristenUnie. ‘The money was there, but it couldn’t be spent on the agreed goals. There are many other challenges, such as the recovery area in Groningen. If then a part of the money is used that could not be spent elsewhere, then it only seems logical to me.’
Algorithms
The Court of Auditors not only controls the lawful spending of taxpayers’ money. Attention has also been drawn in recent years to the approach to bushfires, government information security, limited odor nuisance mitigation, proliferation of tax regimes and algorithms in government that fail to meet basic requirements.
In addition to the State of National Accountability for 2022, the Court of Auditors publishes the audits of the reporting of ministries and various funds, such as the Municipal Fund and the National Growth Fund. Minister Kaag delivers the central government’s annual financial report for 2022 and the departmental annual reports to Speaker of the House of Representatives Vera Bergkamp. Subsequently, the interim president Ewout Irrgang of the Court of Auditors will present the accountability reports.