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This article outlines the sociohistory of policy evaluation practices at the European Court of Auditors (ECA) since its foundation in 1977. Whereas the ECA’s performance auditing has grown, which some consider to be a clear move toward evaluation, an earlier interest in retrospective judgments regarding policy effects can be found in the institution’s history. Based on the analysis of archives and interviews, the article shows how the court sought from the very beginning to act as a “meta-evaluator” of the European Commission’s management systems through its official mandate as an analyst of the EU’s “sound financial management,” stressing the critical role played by former member André Middelhoek, in charge of methodological development. At the end of this revisited sociohistory, the ECA no longer appears as a simple relay, but rather as one of the true sources of the “culture of evaluation” of the European administration.