Brussels, 17/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - The use of EU resources devoted to diversifying the rural economy is not the best, says the EU Court of Auditors.
Essentially, the Court considers in a report published on Tuesday 17 September that member states were often driven by a need to spend the allocated budget rather than by an assessment of the appropriateness of the diversification projects themselves. In some member states, all eligible projects were funded where sufficient budget was available regardless of how the project was assessed in terms of its effectiveness and efficiency. Then later, when funding was tight, better projects were rejected.
EU rural development spending for diversifying the rural economy is intended to address identified problems in rural areas, such as depopulation, scarcity of economic opportunities and unemployment. It provides funding to people and rural businesses for projects to help support growth, employment and sustainable development. Planned EU expenditure for these measures was €5 billion for the 2007-2013 period and €2 billion was also earmarked from the member states' national funds. The audit covered the Commission responsibilities and six member states (the Czech Republic, France-Aquitaine, Italy-Campania, Poland, Sweden-Västra Gotland, and the United Kingdom-Yorkshire and Humber, England).
The overarching priority of job creation was not properly targeted. The methods of monitoring and evaluation in place did not allow the true picture of jobs created and maintained by these measures to be ascertained. The sample of projects audited showed that they were only moderately successful in generating the employment they intended to.
In many cases, the EU auditors found that the projects would have gone ahead even without EU funding, thus resulting in an inefficient use of limited EU funds. Member states' checks on reasonableness of project costs did not sufficiently reduce the risk of overspending. Further, examples of excessive administrative burden and payment delays were identified.
By way of conclusion, the Court considers that “overall, the Commission and the member states have, only to a limited extent, achieved value for money through the measures for diversifying the rural economy, as the aid was not systematically directed to the projects that were most likely to achieve the purpose of the measures”.
The Court takes the view that member states “did not sufficiently mitigate the risks of deadweight and displacement, thus they did not ensure the most efficient use of resources. Member states' checks on reasonableness of costs did not sufficiently reduce the risk of inflated costs and there were examples of an excessive administrative burden on applicants and delays in payments”. (LC/transl.jl)