The European Court of Auditors (ECA) published a new report, on Monday 17 January, in which it calls on the European Union to clarify the contributions of EU funds to businesses’ energy efficiency.
While €2.4 billion from the ‘European Regional Development Fund’ (ERDF) and the ‘Cohesion Fund’ has been earmarked to support companies in their efforts to improve energy efficiency for the period 2014-2020, the auditors found weaknesses in the planning and selection of energy saving projects.
According to them, most of the projects that received funding were already planned and could have been implemented without EU support.
The ECA also notes that no assessment of performance is possible at EU level, as the indicators used by national authorities differ from one Member State to another, sometimes even between programmes in the same Member State.
“So far (...), the real effect of EU funding on businesses’ energy efficiency remains unclear”, said Samo Jereb, the ECA member responsible for the report.
The report further states that most EU spending on energy efficiency in businesses has been concentrated in just a few Member States. The Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Italy and Bulgaria alone accounted for around two-thirds of this expenditure.
See the report: https://bit.ly/3AlsZW1 (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)