Belgium received €31.2 billion in EU funding. OLAF closed four (4) cases in ten years.

915 concluded OLAF investigations across the EU-27 between 2014 and 2023. 324 more outside the EU. Belgium appears in four of them in the decade 2014-2023.

Not four percent, not four per year. Four total, across a decade, two concluded investigations during each mandate, Giovanni Kessler and Ville Itälä.

Romania recorded 164. Hungary 110. Bulgaria 97. Italy 87. Belgium recorded 4. On the same public record, Belgium also sits below Congo, with 7, and Uganda, with 6.

That matters because Belgium is not marginal to the EU funding system, it is one of its main centres. Between 2014 and 2023, Belgium received roughly €31.16 billion in EU funding under direct management, placing it sixth in the Union by total volume. It sits behind Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Poland. It is not a small player at the edge of the budget, it is one of the places where EU money lands at scale.

The OLAF Fraud Index

This article includes the OLAF Fraud Index, which plots concluded OLAF investigations per €1 billion of EU funding received under direct management between 2014 and 2023. The formula is simple: number of concluded investigations × 1000 ÷ funding in million euro.

It is not a fraud map, it is a scrutiny map. It shows where OLAF’s activity concentrates, and where it is almost absent, compared with the money each country receives.

On that measure, Belgium, which hosts the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council, and OLAF itself, records about 0.13 concluded investigations per €1 billion received. Romania records about 9.8. Hungary about 12.1. Bulgaria about 12.75, the highest value in the dataset. Italy stands at just under 1. 

Raw totals tell part of the story. Adjusting for funding volume makes it impossible to ignore.