According to a report published by the Court of Auditors on Wednesday 7 June, the programming of EU external aid funds responds well to the priorities defined with partner countries around the world, but it lacks coherent financial allocation methods and rigorous monitoring indicators to measure the impact of this aid.
The auditors assessed whether the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) had adequately programmed the financial instrument for Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation (NDICI-Global Europe), endowed with €79.5 billion in the EU’s 2021-2027 budget (see EUROPE 12737/4).
Programming consists of drawing up and adopting national, regional and thematic multi-annual indicative programmes (MIPs) for the neighbourhood and non-neighbourhood countries (see EUROPE 12858/14). The mid-term review covered the period 2021-2024 in the three regions that receive the most money: the neighbourhood, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and the Pacific.
The auditors concluded that the programmes were comprehensive and in line with the priorities of both the EU and the partner countries. Because they were adopted late, however, the MIPs were unable to guarantee that the intervention sectors chosen were those in which EU funds could have a high impact.
And while the NDICI Global Europe was supposed to rationalise the EU’s external aid, simplify procedures, clarify spending and increase transparency and efficiency, the auditors found that the Commission and the EEAS applied two different methods to calculate the financial allocations for neighbourhood and non-neighbourhood countries.
For the neighbourhood countries, they did not use a standardised and transparent method, but rather succinct evaluations by country, which were impossible to compare, and the auditors were unable to link the allocation criteria set out in the NDICI regulation to the financial allocations.
The allocations for the non-neighbourhood countries have been calculated using a method that ensures greater comparability and transparency in line with the programming principles of the regulation, although there are some shortcomings.
The auditors also felt that the monitoring framework would not necessarily enable actual achievements to be measured.
“Country envelopes are not calculated rigorously enough, and the programmes lack common indicators to allow progress to be measured”, according to Hannu Takkula, the ECA member responsible for the audit.
The Court of Auditors therefore recommends:
- improving the method for allocating funding to the neighbourhood countries by ensuring that it is standardised, comparable and transparent;
- better documenting and rigorously applying the method used to establish allocations for non-neighbourhood countries;
- clarifying the method to be used to assess the impact of EU support;
- defining the scope of the programming exercise;
- simplifying the indicators defined in the multi-annual indicative programmes and ensuring that they are used consistently.
The Court hopes that these recommendations should make it possible to improve the financial allocation for 2025-2027.
See the report: https://aeur.eu/f/7b2 (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)