Report of the statutory auditor

Statutory auditor's report to the shareholders’ meeting of Galapagos NV on the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2016

As required by law, we report to you in the context of our appointment as the company’s statutory auditor. This report includes our report on the consolidated financial statements together with our report on other legal and regulatory requirements. These consolidated financial statements comprise the consolidated statements of financial position as at 31 December 2016, the consolidated income statement and statement of comprehensive income, the consolidated cash flow statements and the consolidated statements of changes in equity for the year then ended, as well as the summary of significant accounting policies and other explanatory notes.

Report on the consolidated financial statements – Unqualified opinion

We have audited the consolidated financial statements of Galapagos NV (“the company”) and its subsidiaries (jointly “the group”), prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards as adopted by the European Union and with the legal and regulatory requirements applicable in Belgium. The consolidated statement of financial position shows total assets of 1,083,338 (000) EUR and the consolidated income statement shows a consolidated profit (group share) for the year then ended of 54,012 (000) EUR.

Board of directors’ responsibility for the preparation of the consolidated financial statements

The board of directors is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of consolidated financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as adopted by the European Union and with the legal and regulatory requirements applicable in Belgium, and for such internal control as the board of directors determines is necessary to enable the preparation of consolidated financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

Statutory auditor’s responsibility

Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these consolidated financial statements based on our audit. We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (ISA) as adopted in Belgium. Those standards require that we comply with ethical requirements and plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated financial statements are free from material misstatement.

An audit involves performing procedures to obtain audit evidence about the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. The procedures selected depend on the statutory auditor’s judgment, including the assessment of the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to fraud or error. In making those risk assessments, the statutory auditor considers internal control relevant to the group’s preparation and fair presentation of consolidated financial statements in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the group’s internal control. An audit also includes evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates made by the board of directors, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We have obtained from the group’s officials and the board of directors the explanations and information necessary for performing our audit.

We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Unqualified opinion

In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements of Galapagos NV give a true and fair view of the group’s net equity and financial position as of 31 December 2016, and of its results and its cash flows for the year then ended, in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards as adopted by the European Union and with the legal and regulatory requirements applicable in Belgium.

Report on other legal and regulatory requirements

The board of directors is responsible for the preparation and the content of the directors’ report on the consolidated financial statements.

As part of our mandate and in accordance with the Belgian standard complementary to the International Standards on Auditing applicable in Belgium, our responsibility is to verify, in all material respects, compliance with certain legal and regulatory requirements. On this basis, we make the following additional statement, which does not modify the scope of our opinion on the consolidated financial statements:

• The directors’ report on the consolidated financial statements includes the information required by law, is consistent with the consolidated financial statements and is free from material inconsistencies with the information that we became aware of during the performance of our mandate.

Zaventem, 21 March 2017
The statutory auditor

DELOITTE Bedrijfsrevisoren / Reviseurs d’Entreprises
BV o.v.v.e. CVBA / SC s.f.d. SCRL
Represented by Gert Vanhees

The original text of this report is in Dutch.