According to the European Court of Auditors in a report published on Thursday 23 November, the two new provisions introduced in the financial regulations governing cohesion expenditure in the EU, the ex-ante conditionalities and the performance reserve, are innovative but not sufficiently effective.
Ladislav Balko, a member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the report stated, “If these new requirements are to produce the intended impact, they will need to be changed and the member states will have to take ownership of them and prove their commitment”.
Before applying the 2014-2020 cohesion policy, member states were obliged to respect the ex-ante conditionalities by the end of 2016 at the latest. When these conditionalities were not met, the member states were obliged to adopt specific action plans.
In mid-September, the Commission said that only 11 countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden) complied with their respective action plans. Exceedingly slow progress has been observed throughout the EU with regard to respect for national and European rules on public procurement and state aid. According to the European Court of Auditors, this is “one of the main sources of irregularity in cohesion policy”. It also points out that the Commission is unable to impose financial corrections in the event of the ex-ante conditionalities not being respected.
In an effort to improve respect for the ex-ante conditionalities for the post-2020 period, the Court of Auditors is recommending that better coherence is ensured between this exercise and the “European Semester” budget procedure (see EUROPE 11910). Clearer evaluation criteria based on quantifiable targeted values should also be defined for assessing respect of the ex-ante conditionalities, which should also be ensured throughout the whole future programming period.
Performance reserve. By applying a performance reserve for 299 out of 391 operational programmes, the member states have provided €20 billion. This envelope corresponds to 6% of the total European structural funds allocation.
According to the Court of Auditors, provisions for assessing operational performance programmes, such as respect indicated by intermediate values mean that “the performance reserve will probably not lead to a significant reallocation of cohesion spending to more highly performing programmes”. The European auditors also expressed doubts about almost half of the intermediate targets that have been set out.
The Court of Auditors is calling for more performance reserve emphasis on the results achieved and to use instruments that will help to better demonstrate the real performance of programmes, as well as revise the conditionalities applicable to payment suspensions, as a means of taking action more easily and earlier.
For further information: http://bit.ly/2jRSLxU (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)