The European Commission assured on Monday 28 June that control and monitoring mechanisms will be in place to ensure that financial support from the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan is properly passed on to the beneficiaries of national recovery plans.
Taking the example of the first assessments of the national plans, Marta Wieczorek, spokesperson at the Commission, said that the EU institution was making sure that the audit and control mechanisms were in place for each Member State. Ex-post inspections may also take place on the ground, and the Commission will be empowered to take action to correct any irregularities found, up to and including the recovery of funds that have been improperly distributed.
The EU institution was reacting to a letter sent to it the day before by the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament asking that it not approve Hungary’s €7 billion recovery plan until an anti-fraud system was in place in the country.
The centre-right group asks that: – European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) have access to the list of final beneficiaries of the Hungarian recovery plan; – entities and individuals who have been convicted of serious fraud do not receive support from the European Recovery Plan; – that laws impeding access by civil society and the media to data on the use of public funds be revised or abolished.
István Tiborcz, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, “who continues to receive large EU subsidies despite his history of serious irregularities and conflicts of interest”, would no longer be able to access aid from the European Recovery Plan, Renew Europe points out.
See the group’s letter: https://bit.ly/2UPAdkp (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)