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EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen
Photo: Kenzo Tribouillard / AFP
For many governments, the new EU reconstruction fund is a welcome gift, but Europe's budget supervisors sense danger.
The correct use of the 750 billion euros in the coming years would involve considerable "risks and challenges," according to the new annual report of the European Court of Auditors, which SPIEGEL has received in advance.
Conclusion: Sometimes the problems grow when there is too much money rather than too little.
According to the authority's calculation, the EU will have almost 1.8 trillion euros in budget and fund resources available over the next seven years, almost twice as much as in the previous financial period from 2014 to 2020. There were good reasons for this, the Luxembourgers write Budget overseer on their report.
But now there is a growing risk that some of the money will not be used correctly and in good time.
Some of the EU funds are already flowing out too late
Important regulations for the future EU finances were only passed in the summer of this year, criticize the inspectors. Therefore, an even greater delay in the allocation of funds is to be expected than in earlier times. According to their report, "an even later adoption of the operational programs and further delays in the start of implementation" are to be expected. The administration will come under considerable pressure.
Even today, a considerable part of the EU funds is not flowing out because of the high bureaucratic effort. The international community had spent just 55 percent of the more than 460 billion euros of the European Structural and Investment Fund by the end of last year, with considerable differences between the member states. While rich countries like Finland, Ireland or Luxembourg used up a large part of the money, countries like Italy, Spain or Croatia had not even spent half of the money available.
The Court of Auditors also found significant deficiencies in budgetary control.
When the funds were allocated, there was again a »significant error rate« last year, according to the report.
It was about as high as in 2019. Sometimes the authorities gave the money without sufficient evidence.
Sometimes they violated internal market rules, sometimes contracts were not properly awarded.
There were also shortcomings in the work of the national audit authorities.
"The risk of corruption grows"
The budget experts in the EU Parliament are therefore calling for budget controls to be improved.
While the EU budgets rose sharply, "the budgets of the control authorities have not grown accordingly," criticized the Green MEP Daniel Freund.
"That increases the dangers of corruption and nepotism." In future, he says, one will have to "look more closely at whether clusters appear that indicate systematic misuse of EU funds."