Several political groups in the European Parliament stressed the importance of monitoring how Member States use the financial support granted under the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan on Wednesday 15 December, during a plenary debate in Strasbourg.
Co-rapporteur on the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the budgetary instrument at the heart of the European Recovery Plan, Siegfried Mureșan (EPP, Romania) said the European Court of Auditors, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and OLAF must be able to monitor how European aid is mobilised. “If money is flowing, the Rule of law must be respected”, he added.
For Eider Gardiazabal Rubial (S&D, Spain) and Damian Boeselager (Greens/EFA, Germany), the implementation phase of the European Recovery Plan must be accompanied by close monitoring of spending in the social sector and for the ecological transition respectively.
Dimitrios Papadimoulis (The Left, Greece) called for “a transparency mechanism” to ensure “sound management” of Next Generation EU with a “strong social agenda”. And José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portugal) asked the Commission to publish a list of accepted projects identifying “the final beneficiaries” and the amounts received. “It’s European citizens’ money. They need to know how their taxes are being spent”, he said.
The European Commission is required to work on a reporting system on the final beneficiaries of the European Recovery Plan, but this information will not be public. This controversial issue is one of the reasons why the Hungarian recovery plan has not yet been approved at EU level.
Scoreboard. On Wednesday, Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told MEPs that the scoreboard to monitor the implementation of the RRF - country by country, by type of expenditure and/or reforms undertaken - was now online (see EUROPE 12844/3). Updated annually in April and October, the scoreboard will include data issued by the EU institution or transmitted by the Member States at the end of February and August.
See the scoreboard: https://bit.ly/3s8Kd6T
Regarding the four recovery plans sent to the Commission, the Polish and Hungarian plans will not be approved until the end of 2021. Bogdan Rzońca (ECR, Poland) called the RRF a “political instrument”. “Poland is now expected to set aside its Constitution. This is impossible because Poland is a sovereign State”, he said. The Commission calls on Warsaw to respect EU case law on the independence of the Polish judiciary.
Tamás Deutsch (NI, Hungary) blamed the “political hysteria” caused by the Hungarian law stigmatising LGBTIQ people, which is one of the factors blocking the approval of the Hungarian plan at EU level.
It should be noted that the Netherlands, where a government is being formed, is expected to present its national plan next spring. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)