The autonomy of Dutch aid groups has been sharply diminished over the past 15 years and they are now largely under the control of the foreign affairs ministry, according to researchers at Radboud University in Nijmegen.

‘The ministry has managed to put itself in the driving seat and treats the organisations as if their role is to implement policy,’ researcher Lau Schulpen told Trouw on Monday.

The government has reduced the amount spent on grants to aid groups drastically since 2011 and has introduced themed strategies for subsidies. This means organisations which want to apply for government cash have to meet the ministry’s demands to qualify, Schulpen says.

In the past, most grants used to be given to the big four charities: Oxfam Novib, Cordaid, ICCO and Hivos. These would then divide up the money with other aid groups and use it as they saw fit.

Fragmented

Now, however, the subsidy stream has become highly fragmented. Current aid minister Lilianne Ploumen has 37 different funds up and running or being developed.

Splitting up the aid budget into different pots of cash has advantages for ministers because it allows them to break with the strategies adopted by their predecessors and fund projects which they consider to be important, Schulpen said.

For example, 264 organisations applied for money from a fund set up to boost maternal healthcare and only nine actually won any funding, Trouw points out.

Although this is an extreme example, it does raise questions about efficiency, according to Schulpen. ‘Competition is king, but it should be about alliances,’ he said. He pointed out that the government had to assess all 264 applications for cash, and that the aid groups themselves had all put time and money into their applications.