After scrutinising the behaviour of six member states (Austria, Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands), the European Court of Auditors said in a report adopted on Thursday 3 September that, between 2011 and 2018, member states did not do enough to comply with the socio-economic policy recommendations directed to them at European level.
The Member States have taken into account, “either fully or substantially, only a quarter of these recommendations” and “limited or no progress has been made for almost a third”, said Alex Brenninkmeijer, a member of the Court.
In May, the ECOFIN Council acknowledged that the overall rate of implementation of the country-specific recommendations by member states had remained “low” in 2019 (see EUROPE 12490/12).
With regard to the content of the recommendations, the Court thinks that the European Commission should have placed greater emphasis on two areas: - the fight against poverty, which still affected 109 million people in 2018 (EU target: down to 96 million people by 2020); - and public investment in research, which averaged 2.12% of GDP in 2018 (EU target : 3% of GDP by 2020).
Brenninkmeijer also acknowledged that, although the Commission is better at focusing its recommendations on a limited number of priorities, it should provide more reasons for the ways in which it determines its priorities.
In the interests of transparency, the Court also suggests replacing the annual reporting process with an online database to track the progress of implementation of country-specific recommendations.
Next Generation EU. When member states draw up their national post-Covid-19 recovery plans in the autumn, they will have to demonstrate the extent to which they have drawn on the socio-economic policy recommendations directed to them, and the Commission will be tasked with checking this.
In the opinion of the EU auditors, the European Action Plan has very broad objectives. Consequently, it will be difficult to closely monitor the use of European financial assistance through the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the budgetary instrument at the core of the European Recovery Plan (see EUROPE 12551/11).
The European Court of Auditors will publish a report on the European Recovery Plan in the next few weeks.
The Court's report can be found at: https://bit.ly/31RCCMh (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)