Selection procedures for projects within the framework of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF) still place too much emphasis on spending rather than on results, the European Court of Auditors regrets in a report published on Tuesday 4 September.
“Although the set-up of cohesion policy programmes is now more results-oriented, with a stronger intervention logic and an extensive set of indicators, we conclude overall that project selection is not yet sufficiently results-oriented”, said Ladislav Balko, a member of the European Court of Auditors, responsible for the report.
According to auditors, even though the procedures examined are developed in a way that meets the aims of the operational programmes, the selection criteria only rarely called for quantified result indicators at the level of projects to be defined. Another problem is that the principle of “first come, first served” still prevails, the auditors say, adding that classification of funding requests is almost inexistent.
In addition, the auditors point a finger of blame at the failings of monitoring systems, noting that they became operational late in the day, mainly due to delays incurred in adopting the legislative framework. The Court also considers that the IT systems used present “weaknesses” in the collection and aggregation of follow-up data. Consequently, there is considerable risk that correcting measures will come late before performance is examined in 2019, the Court states. Here too, the auditors consider that monitoring indicators are not sufficiently results-oriented.
The Court of Auditors thus recommends that: - member states should ensure that an effective comparison is made between the project proposals; - the beneficiaries should define at least one indicator of real results for each project; - the member states, but also the Commission for the ERDF, should fix common results indicators, on the basis of a common definition of the notion of “result”.
The report can be consulted at https://bit.ly/2Q6z699. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)