Commissaris Hübner wil dat lidstaten meer financiële controle uitoefenen op structuurfondsen (en)
Danuta Hübner i, the European Commissioner for regional policy, is today participating in a conference in Lisbon on “Use and control of EU structural funds”. The conference follows the publication, on Monday 10 November, of the annual report of the European Court of Auditors, which encouraged the Commission to continue in its efforts to help Member States address weaknesses in management and control systems for the Structural Funds.
"We need effective controls at Member State level to ensure that we harness the full potential of the EU's Cohesion Policy, which is needed more than ever in these challenging economic times," said Commissioner Hübner.
The Commission launched an Action Plan on 16 February 2008 to strengthen the Commission's supervisory role under shared management of structural actions and a progress report adopted on 5 November 2008 highlights that the actions taken by the Commission are already having an impact. The main idea is to help Member States do a better job of checking the eligibility of project expenditure before they submit payment claims to the Commission (see MEMO/08/673).
In its report on 10 November, the European Court of Auditors recognises that improvements have taken place. But it also indicated that the level of errors in Structural Funds' payment claims by Member States, which can result in incorrect transfers from the EU budget and subsequent clawbacks by the Commission, remains too high. The Commission is taking tougher measures to suspend payments and make financial clawbacks where Member States fall below standards. Since the beginning of 2008, the Commission has clawed back €843 million – three times more than in the whole of 2007 – and a further €1.5 billion of financial corrections are in the pipeline between now and March 2009. The Commission has also formally suspended payments for seven programmes this year (2 in Italy, 2 inter-regional, and one each in UK, Bulgaria and Luxembourg).
Commission helping Member States to reduce errors
The Cohesion Policy is a decentralised policy, which means that while the Commission defines and agrees on Cohesion Policy investment priorities with the Member States, it is up to the Member States and regions to identify the projects which will benefit from EU support.
The Commission attaches importance to providing guidance and training to all those involved in the management of the EU funds: the “managing authorities” (who manage the programmes), the “intermediate bodies” (acting on behalf of the managing authorities), the final "beneficiaries" (who implement the projects) and the audit authorities. Two major seminars were organised in Brussels in 2008 with the aim of clarifying funding rules, improving controls and reducing errors.
The most common errors are contracts awarded without a proper tender procedure, inadequate documentation to support project expenditure, incorrect co-financing rates and overestimated payment claims.
Funding rules simplified
The Commission is also working with Member States to simplify funding rules. The 2007-2013 programmes have already been simplified by allowing the use of flat-rate payments for overheads in certain cases and making it possible to shorten the period for which beneficiaries have to keep supporting documents. The Commission has also recently proposed an amendment to the rules on projects which generate revenue, so that they will not apply to smaller projects.
Note for editors
Vítor Caldeira, the President of the European Court of Auditors, Herbert Bösch, Chairman of the Budgetary Control Committee of the European Parliament, as well as Francisco Nunes Correia, Portuguese Minister for Environment, Spatial Planning and Regional Development, will also take part in today’s conference in Lisbon.
Error is a general term used to cover any non-compliance with a condition for receiving EU funds. Error does not mean fraud. The stringent audit work carried out by the European Commission, the European Court of Auditors and national audit authorities each year has detected only isolated cases of fraud. According to OLAF, the European Anti-Fraud Office, suspected frauds affected 0.16% of payments (equivalent to €290m) made by the Commission in the framework of the Cohesion Policy since 2000. The Commission always takes action to recover money where errors have a financial impact.
Europe's Cohesion Policy has created around 600 000 jobs since 2000. The policy will invest €347 billion in 2007-2013 in the 27 Member States, which represents 35% of the total Community budget for the same period (€975 billion).
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