Open access mandates are setting standards on how to publish open access, as well as indicate the timeframe in which these goals are supposed to be reached. Parallel to the OA development, taken up both nationally as well supra-nationally, European and thus also Dutch academics are confronted with an increasing pressure to cooperate scientifically with European partners, via the consortia obligations expressed via for example EU funding instruments such as those under the more recent Framework programmes. In this study, the question arose to what extent Dutch output was directly under the Big deals, that means, a situation in which any publication with a Netherlands based author as corresponding author was involved, would get OA format published. The choice for corresponding author was a second best approach, as the preferred choice for this analysis would have been submitting author. In this analysis, also scientific cooperation was considered as an important element of the way output was created, and how that linked to OA publishing. The main research question here is: to what extent is the Dutch OA mandate hindered by EU policies to increasingly work together internationally for EU scientists?