WILLEMSTAD – The government intends to make structural use of Article 47 of the Landsverordening Comptabiliteit, a provision originally designed for exceptional emergency situations, as a regular policy instrument for budget amendments. This became clear from remarks by Minister of Finance Charles Cooper during the parliamentary debate on the 2026 national budget.
Article 47 grants the government authority to deviate from the approved budget in urgent cases without obtaining prior approval from the Staten van Curaçao. Until now, the article has generally been regarded as an emergency mechanism intended for extraordinary circumstances.
Cooper, however, now presents the provision as a practical tool to accelerate financial decision-making and prevent delays in essential government processes.
According to the minister, this approach is necessary to ensure timely compliance with international financial obligations, prevent stagnation in critical infrastructure projects, and enable the prompt implementation of recommendations from supervisory bodies. Under this policy line, the government opts to involve parliament after decisions have been taken rather than beforehand.
This effectively shifts parliamentary authorization from an ex ante approval role to ex post oversight. As a result, the role of the Staten moves away from prior consent toward retrospective control, giving Article 47 a broader application than originally intended.
The Algemene Rekenkamer Curaçao has already expressed concerns about earlier uses of Article 47 in its report on the 2023 national accounts. The Audit Chamber concluded that budget amendments were implemented that year without prior parliamentary approval and that several supplementary budget changes were not formalized through national ordinances.
According to the Audit Chamber, these practices resulted in balance sheet changes and expenditures that were not in line with existing legal requirements. It warned that the structural use of Article 47 risks undermining budgetary discipline and legal compliance.
In the text of the law itself, Article 47 is explicitly linked to situations of urgent necessity not covered by the budget. The concept of urgency is legally associated with circumstances such as war or the threat of war, natural disasters, or other extraordinary events. From a legal perspective, the provision is therefore intended as an exception, not as a standard budgeting procedure.
