Brussels, 02/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Court of Auditors has produced a report that criticises EU foreign policy in the field of macro-financial assistance (MFA) to European Union accession candidate countries and western Balkan countries, as well as Structural Adjustment Facilities (SAF) to Mediterranean countries. The Court of Auditors criticises the European Commission for not having always checked the dependability of the budgetary and accounting process in beneficiary countries, for not having produced documents justifying its decisions on the amount of aid and the timetable of paying out the different tranches and for not having systematically respected the political guidelines laid down in 1995 by the Council and which ought to guide its policy in this area. During the 1998-2000 period, EUR 822 million was paid to nine countries as part of MFA and EUR 470 million to the five countries in the SAF programmes between 1996 and 2000.
The Court has revealed that some conditions for the disbursement of structural aid to Mediterranean countries had not been respected. Such is the case with Jordan (the Parliament of the county had been expected to approve a law on competition) and the Lebanon (conditions on the payment of aid such as budget deficit reduction and the increase in the wage bill should have been included in the 2000 law on finance in the country). On the subject of macro-financial aid to third countries, the Court has made a number of criticisms of the European Commission's justification of the exceptional nature of the aid, which explained that the added value of the EU contribution was in relation to aid from international financial institutions (World Bank and the IMF). Thus, the Court emphasises, in certain cases (aid to Bulgaria and Romania) MAF has become "regular and permanent instead of exceptional".