Brussels, 01/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 1 April, the European Commission announced the resumption of payments under the Operational Programme for the region of Calabria 2007-13. A payment of €796 million from the European regional development fund (ERDF) will be made by the end of April.
Payments were interrupted in 2010 and then suspended in 2012 following a decision by the European Commission, relating to serious shortcomings in the way the operational programme functioned and was managed. The Commission considered that the project selection process had not been carried out according to ad hoc criteria and highlighted a high level of public procurement irregularities. It also identified a number of problems at the auditing unit. Firstly, it was not financially independent because its budget was “covered by a chapter in the operational programme budget”. Secondly, at the time of the payment suspension, the checks that it had carried out were often “late and incomplete”. At the time, Italy did propose a number of corrective measures, such as taking on more auditors but the Commission deemed these proposals insufficient
The European Commission said that resuming payments in April 2015, followed the implementation of the corrective measures needed for the proper functioning of the programme. Neither the Commission nor the Italian authorities were able to provide EUROPE with the details of these corrective measures. (Jean Comte)