In order to effectively combat double-funding, fraud and conflicts of interest, “it is essential that Member States collect and record data on final recipients and beneficiaries of Union funding in an electronic standardised and interoperable format and use the single data mining tool to be provided by the Commission”, stated the European Parliament and the European Commission in a joint declaration appended to the Regulation establishing the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the instrument at the heart of the NextGenerationEU European Recovery Plan that was the subject of an interinstitutional agreement in December (see EUROPE 12626/1).
During the trilogue negotiations, the European Parliament fought for maximum transparency over the implementation of the Facility, although a number of Member States raised doubts. The Commission will have to set up a database, but this reporting will not be mandatory. Every six months, and at the latest from the end of December, it will publish a scoreboard that will serve as a basis for its regular dialogue with MEPs over the progress made with the Recovery Plan and specifically regarding any difficulties that may have been encountered.
In another statement, the European Commission noted its ambition to raise 30% of the total amount required to finance the Facility from the green bonds markets. In another joint declaration, the Commission, the EU Council and the European Parliament agreed to “seriously” explore the possibility of introducing reporting obligations for Member States, with a specific legislative proposal scheduled for the first quarter of 2021.
After receiving the green light from the EU Council’s national experts, the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU have been invited to quickly approve the provisional Interinstitutional Agreement. MEPs shall do the same in January.
See the text of the Regulation establishing the Facility: https://bit.ly/2X6otrh (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)