Wednesday is Accountability Day again in The Hague. That day is also known as the counterpart of Prinsjesdag, but without festivities. On this third Wednesday in May, the cabinet reports to parliament for the previous year. The Court of Audit checks whether all ministers had their affairs in order.
On this day, as on Prinsjesdag, we do not look ahead, but look back. So this time on the year 2021. What were the plans, what has been 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 hands over 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 organised? Has the money been collected and spent according to the rules?
In recent years, the government has had to deal with quite a bit of criticism from the Court of Audit. The institute then speaks of “imperfections”, which is jargon for abuses. In 2020 there were a total of fifty.
In 2020, for example, the Court of Audit rebuked Wopke Hoekstra, who was the Minister of Finance at the time. He had acted unlawfully in 2019 when the cabinet decided to take a share in Air France-KLM. Parliament was not fully informed about this.
It sometimes happens that the Court of Audit criticizes the entire cabinet. That happened last year, for example.
In the end, the entire government account for 2020 was approved by the Court of Audit, but big question marks were raised about it. The obligations and expenses did not meet the requirements. The cabinet had not complied with the rules for an amount of 9 billion euros and 4.3 billion euros.
This was mainly at the expense of the Ministry of Health. 5 billion euros was unlawfully spent on, among other things, test materials and protective equipment against the corona virus. For example, receipts were missing and there was uncertainty about whether everything was correct on invoices.
In the weeks after Accountability Day, a debate takes place in the House of Representatives. The Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister are in any case present.
If things have gone very wrong at a ministry, a minister must also be accountable for this. He or she must then explain how the problems are tackled and solved.
The annual reports of all ministries are then treated as bills by the House of Representatives and the Senate. When the Houses adopt the bills, the budget year is closed.