Hidden Costs of the Dutch Royal House

[Marengo]

RTL news did some research about the costs of the Royal House. They say that there is some sort of 'smoke screen', various departments try to 'hide' costs etc. For example the ministery of Traffic & Waterstate: they only listed the costs of the royal airplane on their balance while the other travels of the members of the royal house with other airplanes are not listed. In 2001 they said the costs were 275.000 euros while the real costs were 1.1 million euros for example.

Article of RTL news in Dutch here.

[SASSY]

Is this something that upsets the Dutch people?

Who are the people on your avitar?

[Marengo]

Well, some people will nag about it, some politicians will ask questions in parlament but in the end nothing will be changed I think. But I can imagine that if more 'hidden' costs are traced that there will be a wider discussion about the costs, hopefully resulting in more clarity.
Apart from RTL not many other newsprogrammes or newspapers picked the story up, I only heard it on the radio news.

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The people in my avatar are the late count and countess of Paris. He was the head of the French royal House while she was born into the Brazilian Imperial family.

[Marengo]

the president of the ' rekenkamer' , Saskia Stuiveling, has critisiced the Prime Minister in parlament for not being open about the costs of the Royal House.

Additional information: then costs for Palace Soestdijk are still placed under the costs of the RF, while the RF actually gave the place up 2 years ago. It is expected that more costs of other departments are hidden in the costs of the RF.

And another thing, the costs that were visible decreased from 114 to 106 million euros a year.

[Marengo]

Royalblog has an article about it:

Overview cost of Dutch monarchy unclear

The Netherlands Court of Audit has sharply critised the Dutch governement for the lack of transparency in money spent for the upkeep of the Royal House. ,,It is disappointing" that Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende refuses to give a more detailed overview of the expenditures, as requested by Dutch parliament.

Look here.

And another article from Dutchnews.nl:

Auditor criticises vague government targets

Wednesday 21 May 2008
Many of the 76 targets the government set out in its 'working together, living together' manifesto are too vague or impossible to achieve, the national audit office said in its report on the government’s first year in office.

Terms such as 'reducing crime by 25% by 2010' were meaningless because the way the statistics were calculated had been changed, the NRC reports the audit office as saying. Government policy was being sold by rhetoric and the excuse 'I cannot be more specific' used too often, one audit office member told the paper.

Read the entire article here.