The commission is responsible for disbursing money from the fund.
(Photo: imago images/ZUMA Press)
Brussels The European Court of Auditors has identified a number of shortcomings in the allocation of billions in aid from the Corona reconstruction fund. In a first interim report on Thursday, the examiners criticized vague goals, a lack of transparency and incomplete controls.
In the summer of 2020, the EU member states approved the €800 billion Next Generation EU fund to mitigate the economic consequences of the pandemic. A part of the investments should flow into the digital and ecological change.
In order to receive money from the fund, each country had to submit a national recovery plan. The EU Commission is responsible for approving these plans and disbursing them.
The Court of Auditors has now randomly examined six countries to see how well the process has gone so far. These included Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Croatia. All six roadmaps contained “milestones and targets that lacked clarity,” the report said.
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As a German negative example, the auditors cited a project called “Innovative Data Policy”. The federal government had only mentioned the start of the project as a milestone, there was no verification mechanism. The auditors complained that the lack of clear goals entailed the risk that these would be difficult to assess. There is also a risk that the originally intended goal will not be achieved.
Germany will receive a total of 26.5 billion euros for 40 measures from the reconstruction fund. Among other things, the Court of Auditors took a closer look at hydrogen projects, the digitization of administration and the future program for hospitals. He concluded that the German plans met the minimum requirements. However, the information presented was “of varying degrees of detail and depth of calculation”.
Several countries ignored deadlines
The Court of Auditors also complained that the Commission had no criteria for suspending or reducing payments if milestones were not met. The payment of individual tranches is often not linked to the costs and phases of specific projects, but has been negotiated between the Commission and the Member State, said the responsible examiner Ivana Maletic.
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Several countries have also ignored the requirement for funds to flow by August 2026 at the latest. The federal government, for example, has planned to order 2,800 buses with alternative drives by the third quarter of 2026. This means that the financing goes beyond the actual deadline.
The auditors are now recommending a number of improvements. There must be more exchange between the member states, clearer controls of the milestones and better documentation to increase transparency, said Maletic. It is crucial that the EU Commission eliminates these risks quickly and effectively.
However, given the exceptional situation in the pandemic, which required quick action, the Court of Auditors allowed mitigating circumstances. The report concludes that the Commission has given the national development plans an “appropriate” rating overall.
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