Country profile - NLD

Corruption in Netherlands

12 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 84.3 (2022).

Grand: 72.8 Petty: 87.4 Latest observed: 2022

Netherlands: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Netherlands is Limburg (80.1/100), and the least corrupt is Friesland (87.9/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 12 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Netherlands's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 84.3/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Limburg (SCI 80.1/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Friesland (SCI 87.9/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 72.8/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 87.4/100 (last directly observed in 2022).
  • Trend: Netherlands's SCI moved from 74.1/100 (1995) to 84.3/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 12 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Netherlands compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Netherlands into 12 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 84.3 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 80 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption 1.9 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 12 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

88 72 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (12)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Limburg NLDr112 1995-2022 80.1
2 Noord-Brabant NLDr111 1995-2022 80.2
3 Groningen NLDr101 1995-2022 82.6
4 Overijssel NLDr104 1995-2022 83.6
5 Utrecht NLDr107 1995-2022 83.7
6 Flevoland NLDr106 1995-2022 84.4
7 Zeeland NLDr110 1995-2022 85.1
8 Noord-Holland NLDr108 1995-2022 85.4
9 Drenthe NLDr103 1995-2022 86.2
10 Gelderland NLDr105 1995-2022 86.3
11 Zuid-Holland NLDr109 1995-2022 86.5
12 Friesland NLDr102 1995-2022 87.9

Download Netherlands

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download NLD.csv