Brussels, 24/06/2003 (Agence Europe) - The own initiative report by Dana Rosemary Scallon (EPP-ED, Ireland) on the Commission's 2001 Annual Report on the Cohesion Funds, adopted by the plenary last week, focusses on two countries, Ireland (which will stop receiving money from the Cohesion Fund in 2003 because it has now passed the threshold of 90% of the EU15's average revenue) and Portugal (whose payments may be suspended given its 4.1% deficit in 2001).
The Berlin European Council conclusions set the Cohesion Fund at EUR 18 billion for 2000-2006. The total budget for 2001 was EUR 2.715 bn in commitment credits, plus EUR 413.6 million brought forward from 2000. The rapporteur says the financial implementation of the Funds was “acceptable” in 2001, with a serious gap regarding the impact of past commitments. 48.5% of the Funds were used for transport (especially rail) and the remaining 51.5% on environment projects, focussing on drinking water, sewage treatment plans and solid waste.
The report calls on the Commission to be more vigilant and increase controls, which need to be particularly vigorous in the awarding of public contracts. Only six audit missions were organised in 2001, none of them in Ireland, which the rapporteur describes as “clearly insufficient”. Member States have duly reported irregularities that they are investigating as required by a 1994 ruling. Spain, Portugal and Ireland have not reported any irregularities, while Greece has reported four cases covering almost EUR 2.5 billion in total (proceedings to recover the funding have been opened in three of the cases, and the entrepreneur in question has remedied the situation in the fourth case).
Enlargement will have a major impact on how the Cohesion Fund works, notes the rapporteur, adding that is will no doubt be difficult to strike a balance between the environment and transport since the projects sent in by the candidate countries tend to cover infrastructure.