The tenth National SDG Report reads as one repeated finding across six sectors. Dutch progress stalls on coherence rather than commitment. That is the precise gap the Circular Readiness Levels were built to close.
The tenth National SDG Report landed in May 2026, ten years into the agenda. Most coverage treats it chapter by chapter: a number for renewables here, a line on poverty there. Read end to end, something more useful appears. Six sectors wrote their chapters independently, and the same diagnosis surfaces in nearly every one.
The decentrale overheden put it most plainly. Execution does not falter for want of ambition. It falters for want of voorspelbare en samenhangende randvoorwaarden, predictable and coherent preconditions. The bedrijfsleven chapter says the same thing from the opposite side. Companies now treat verduurzaming as core strategy rather than an optional extra, yet investments sit on the shelf because the grid is full and permits move slowly. The willingness and the capital are both there. The conditions are not.
The same diagnosis, again and again
Once you notice the pattern, it repeats. Tap any sector below to read its chapter finding, and see how the same shape shows up inside a single organisation.
Tap a sector to see its finding from the tenth National SDG Report and how the same pattern shows up inside a single organisation.
The common thread is hard to miss. The system holds plenty of capability and plenty of intent. What it lacks is the shared foundation that lets those move in step.
CRL2 without CRL1, at national scale
This is a pattern the Circular Readiness Levels were built to name. The CRL framework runs from CRL1, shared understanding, up to CRL5, ecosystem alignment. The most common and most expensive failure across the whole climb is the attempt to reach the second rung, building capability and delivering, before the first rung is solid.
It looks like progress. An organisation funds the technology and writes the strategy, then watches the programme stall, because the shared understanding that would let partners move together was never established. We call it CRL2 without CRL1, and it is the most reliable predictor we know of a circular initiative that consumes budget without producing outcomes.
The SDG report is that failure pattern written at the scale of a country. The programmes are live: the Nationaal Programma Leefbaarheid en Veiligheid, Participatiewet in Balans, the Burgerberaad Klimaat, the natuurinclusief agenda. Money is committed and ambition is on the record. And still execution stalls, because the conditions for joined-up action across departments and layers of government were never put in place.
The circular economy reads the same way
Nowhere is the diagnosis sharper than on circularity itself. On the SDSN spillover index, which measures the negative effect one country imposes on others, the Netherlands sits 164th of 167, last in Western Europe. The report states it without softening: relatively speaking, Dutch consumption hinders other countries most in reaching the goals.
The gap, in two numbers
The Netherlands scores well on its own goals, and badly on the cost it exports.
Switch the map between the two indices. On Spillover — harm exported to other countries — the Netherlands sits second-to-last in the EU and 164th of 167 globally. On SDG performance — progress on its own goals — it sits comfortably in the EU pack. The dark band across the small, open economies (NL, LUX, IRL, BEL, CYP) on the spillover view is the same pattern.
Selected: Netherlands · click again to deselect or select another country
Spillover Index (harm exported)
≤ 50 worst50–6060–7070–80 best
Spillover (harm exported)
44.11
EU rank 26 / 27 · higher is better
SDG performance (own goals)
79.98
EU rank 19 / 27 · higher is better
The gap
+35.87
performance minus spillover
Sources: SDSN Sustainable Development Report 2025 country dashboards (dashboards.sdgindex.org), cross-referenced for the Netherlands against the Tiende Nationale SDG-Rapportage (May 2026). Both indices run 0–100; on each, a higher score is better. EU ranks are computed across the EU-27 shown here.
How the Netherlands exports its costs
The spillover score is not an abstraction. It tallies the harm embedded in what the country imports and the policy spillovers it radiates. On the SDSN dashboard, four channels do most of the damage, and they all sit upstream of Dutch consumers.
Imported deforestation and land use. The Netherlands is one of Europe's largest per-capita importers of soy, palm oil, cocoa and timber. The land footprint sits in Brazil, Indonesia, Ivory Coast and Ghana; the profit margin and the consumption sit here. SDR 2025 flags this as a top-tier negative spillover for the country.
Embedded CO₂ and air pollution. More than half of the emissions tied to Dutch consumption are released in other countries — steel from India, electronics from China, fertiliser inputs from north Africa. Domestic emissions fall on the national scoreboard while the global footprint keeps growing.
Nitrogen, water and biodiversity loss elsewhere. Dutch livestock and dairy run on imported feed. The nitrogen crisis at home is real; the water stress, eutrophication and habitat conversion needed to grow that feed land on river basins in Latin America and the EU's eastern neighbours.
Financial and tax spillovers. The flow of Dutch money to tax havens has dropped from €37 bn to €6.5 bn a year — a genuine win the report celebrates — but the Netherlands still appears prominently in the SDR's tax-haven score because of its role as a conduit jurisdiction. Money that never reaches public budgets in producer countries is harm too.
None of this shows up in the 79.98 performance score. That is the point of two indices. A country can run a clean scoreboard at home while running a heavy tab abroad, and the Dutch tab — measured in forests, emissions, nitrogen and foregone tax revenue — is one of the heaviest in the EU.
For neighbours, this is not theoretical. Belgium and Germany share the Rhine and the North Sea; nitrogen, microplastics and pharmaceutical residues from Dutch agriculture and industry don't stop at the border. Eastern EU members absorb a disproportionate share of the feed and biomass supply chains. And every country downstream of the Port of Rotterdam — the EU's largest entry point for fossil fuels and bulk commodities — inherits part of the footprint logged against the trading nation that handled them.
The report also names the lever. A circular economy by 2050 is described as a broad contributor to cutting that footprint, through smarter and leaner use of raw materials. In October 2025 the Nationaal Programma Circulaire Economie was sharpened: the single aim of halving primary raw material use by 2030 gave way to three concrete 2035 targets for saving, substituting, and retaining materials, each with measurable goals. That is a real move from one abstract ambition to a results-oriented set, and it carries direct consequences for any roadmap built on the old target.
Here the CRL lens earns its place. The same report notes that the means for the circular economy programme are shrinking, so its supporting instruments can be deployed only in a limited way. And the sectors ask, in recommendation H, for a national platform that hands MKB firms concrete tools and practical guidance to apply the SDGs across their chains. Put those two together and the shape is familiar: the targets exist, a higher-rung artefact, while the shared understanding and practical readiness that would let firms act on them remain a gap. CRL2 without CRL1, restated for the circular transition.
The honest read is encouraging
The foundation is real. Renewable energy is approaching 20% of total use, around double the level of a decade ago. In the 20 hardest urban districts, poverty fell from 18% to 8%. The flow of Dutch money to tax havens dropped from €37 billion a year to €6.5 billion. The collaboration that produced this report, across government, business, knowledge institutions, young people, and civil society, is itself a result.
What separates the next five years from the last ten is readiness rather than ambition: the shared understanding and coherent conditions that turn capability into outcomes. For any organisation building a circular strategy, the lesson the report demonstrates at national scale holds at the scale of a single business. Before you build capability or fund the programme, establish the shared understanding that lets your partners move with you. Skip it, and you join the long line of well-funded, well-intentioned programmes that stall on coherence rather than commitment.
That is the rung most plans skip. It is also the one that decides whether the rest of the climb holds.
Build the rung before the climb
CRL Diagnostic. See whether your organisation has built CRL1 shared understanding, or jumped straight to compliance. Get in touch
Sector Cohort Programme. Build the coherent preconditions across a peer group, so no one has to move alone. Explore the cohort
Tenth National SDG Report (Nederland), May 2026. Chapters by decentrale overheden, bedrijfsleven, jongeren, kennisinstellingen and maatschappelijk middenveld.
SDSN Sustainable Development Report, spillover index ranking the Netherlands 164th of 167.
Nationaal Programma Circulaire Economie, sharpened October 2025: three 2035 targets for saving, substituting and retaining materials.
Nationale Jeugdstrategie, co-developed with 12,000 young people.
