In a report published on Wednesday 14 March, the European Court of Auditors says that the EU's financial aid for Turkey to get it to align itself with EU legislation and boost its administrative capabilities had had "limited effect".
The financial aid earmarked for 2007-2020 through the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) amounts to over €9 billion, although this amount has been reduced because of the situation in Turkey. The auditors focused on 15 projects, totalling €112 million, for the rule of law, governance and human resources (education, employment and social policies).
"Although the assistance was well designed, funding did not sufficiently address some fundamental needs in the rule of law and governance sectors, where critical reforms are overdue", say the auditors. They advise the European Commission to target funding better in line with the set objectives, focusing more on domains where necessary reforms for making credible progress towards accession are being delayed, such as independence and impartiality of the judicial system, fighting large-scale corruption and organised crime, freedom of the press and strengthening civil society.
The auditors note: "In areas where there was more political will, such as customs, employment and taxation, projects did help bring Turkey into line with EU law. But the results may not be sustainable because of difficulties in spending the funds and backsliding on reforms (…) A situation aggravated by the large-scale dismissals and suspensions of public officials and restrictions on civil society".
The court says the Commission should focus more on conditions since "applying conditions to funding can help foster reform". But despite continuing unsatisfactory progress, the auditors found that the Commission had made little use of conditions to support reforms in the priority sectors. In particular, the Commission seldom used conditions such as the option of recentralising the management of projects or corrective measures if project conditions were not respected. The auditors recommend the Commission improve sector-wide assessment, the monitoring of project performance and selectively applying indirect management.
Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said that the Commission had already taken measures to deal with the errors noted in the report, such as refocusing aid on priority domains. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)