In a report presented on Wednesday 11 September, the European Court of Auditors considers that the European Commission may have overestimated the measures to promote the EU’s climate objectives included in Member States’ post-Covid-19 recovery plans.
The regulation (2021/21) establishing the ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’ (RRF), the budgetary instrument of the European Recovery Plan, requires Member States to devote at least 37% of their financial allocation to climate action. With the inclusion of ‘REPowerEU’ chapters aimed at accelerating the energy transition and reducing the EU’s dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, the level rises to 42.5% of the funds allocated, according to the European Commission.
However, according to Joëlle Elvinger, the member of the Court of Auditors responsible for the report, the ‘RRF’ suffers from “a high level of approximation in the related plans” and “discrepancies between planning and practice, and ultimately provides little indication of how much money goes directly to the green transition”. These “serious weaknesses” cast doubt on the ability of national recovery plans to achieve the announced climate targets, she noted.
The Commission’s methodology of applying coefficients (100%, 40%, 0%) to measure the contribution of a measure to climate action can also lead to approximations that overestimate this contribution.
According to the European auditors, who assessed the plans of Greece, Croatia, Portugal and Slovakia, another factor complicates the assessment of the contribution to climate action of the measures supported by the RRF. In general, Member States provide cost estimates in advance of the implementation of their plan. As the actual costs of the measures may differ significantly from the estimated costs, the auditors recommend that the projects be evaluated more accurately and that information on all the expenditure incurred be published.
The Court of Auditors also assessed how the ‘do no significant harm’ principle was applied to the 24 measures in the sample analysed. It notes that Member States apply this principle differently, mainly because of its complexity. For example, Croatia carried out an in-depth assessment, whereas Greece systematically opted for a simplified approach.
For the Commission, which has rejected many of the Court’s recommendations, it is primarily up to Member States to verify compliance with the ‘do no significant harm’ principle.
See the report by the European Court of Auditors: https://aeur.eu/f/deq (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)